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SPOOT

Hackathon · BeaverHacks 2026, Oregon State · May 2026

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SPOOT

The wearer at the centre, front at the top. The red mark is where a sound came from. Move your pointer: it is the sound. Tap near the ring: the tap is the sound.

3rd place, Google — Best Use of Gemini

Glasses that show you where a sound came from.

My part
The phone AR layer, the 3D-printed glasses hardware, the Raspberry Pi bring-up
Team
Carson Secrest, Jakhangir Tynshimov
Event
BeaverHacks 2026, Oregon State, May 2⁠-⁠3, 2026

Why

One ear, no direction

A friend of ours is deaf in one ear. He cannot tell where a sound is coming from, so he always turns the same way.

The idea is borrowed from video games, which draw a sound on the screen where it is. We wanted the same thing on a pair of glasses.

  • A car on your right
  • Someone calling you from behind

Three steps

How it hears

  1. Hear

    Microphones

    The 3D-printed glasses come with a reSpeaker XVF3800, a USB array of four microphones, on a Raspberry Pi. On the Pi itself, Silero VAD picks out speech and faster-whisper transcribes it.

    The glasses hardware and the Pi bring-up were my part.

    4 mics XVF3800 USB Raspberry Pi Silero VAD faster-whisper → transcript
    Diagram. Four microphones in, text out, on the Pi.

  2. Ask

    Direction

    The array's direction-of-arrival reading is mapped to a bearing around the wearer. The transcript, the bearing and the volume go to Gemini Flash, which answers in JSON: how important the sound is, whether it was meant for you, and a message of eight words.

    Carson built the mapping and the Gemini integration in the server.

    Bearing Gemini Flash In: text, bearing, volume Out, as JSON: importance for you? 8-word message
    Diagram. A bearing and a transcript in, a three-part answer out.

  3. Show

    Display

    The result shows in two places: on an I2C OLED HUD, and in an AR web app on the phone.

    Carson built the HUD. The phone AR layer was mine.

    I2C OLED HUD Phone AR
    Diagram. One result, two screens.

See it running: the demo video (opens in a new tab) On Carson Secrest's YouTube channel.

The award

3rd place in Google's Best Use of Gemini

SPOOT placed 3rd in Google's Best Use of Gemini track at BeaverHacks 2026, held at Oregon State on May 2⁠-⁠3, 2026. The clip walks from the tables up to the stage.

Jakhangir and his teammate on stage under the BeaverHacks banner, both holding prize cards, beside a presenter with a microphone, the audience in the foreground
On stage under the BeaverHacks banner, prize cards in hand.
From my seat up to the stage, with the hall's sound. Sound · 0:45
Jakhangir, his teammate Carson Secrest and the Google track presenter standing together in a hallway, event lanyards on
With Carson and the Google track presenter.

Credits

A team of two

Who built what, as the repository README splits it.

Jakhangir Tynshimov
  • Phone AR layer
  • 3D-printed glasses hardware
  • Raspberry Pi bring-up
Carson Secrest
  • OLED HUD
  • Gemini integration in the server
  • Direction-of-arrival mapping

Built with

reSpeaker XVF3800 · Raspberry Pi · Silero VAD · faster-whisper · Gemini Flash · I2C OLED · phone AR web app