Using the NEW Ray-Ban Stories on the Manufacturing Floor

We took a pair of the new Ray-Ban Stories out onto the manufacturing floor to document processes. Below is what we found from our first day!

Overview

Last week Ray-Ban released their first pair of Smart Glasses: Ray-Ban Stories. Packed into these glasses are two cameras, microphones, on device storage, and simple controls. Although these glasses are designed for social media content creators, my team and I thought they seemed very useful for documenting work floor processes within manufacturing companies…

We quickly bought a pair of the glasses and have spent the week testing them out with a client. As it turns out…they are AMAZING for documenting hands-on processes with photos and videos! (and they work perfectly in tandem with Proceed.app!)

But wait…didn’t Ray-Ban Partner with Facebook on the Ray-Ban Stories? This may put a weird feeling in your gut (it definitely did for me) but after looking into it I found that Facebook is very transparent about data management for the Ray-Ban Stories. They are intentional about explaining what data gets shared, where that data goes, and what they do with it. Most importantly, they make it very clear that your photos and videos DO NOT get synced to their servers.

Below are our findings from the initial few days of testing. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Documenting Hands-On Processes with Ray -Ban Stories

We bought the Ray-Ban Stories Wayfarer Model with the Clear Blue Light Filter Lenses (non-prescription). Overall it is very easy to get going. To set up the glasses, you just download the Facebook View App and follow the instructions. Takes about 1-2 minutes.

• After placing them on your face, you can capture photos and videos by pressing the button on the frame or via voice commands.
• There are different audio cues for when you capture a picture or when you start/stop video recording. It is a little tough to hear when working in a loud environment. However there is an interior indicator light on the right hand side of the frame that lets you know when it is recording or if it takes a picture.
• The voice control works really well and is great for allowing you to operate hands-free. We tested this in a semi-noisy environment and it actually worked pretty well regardless of the noise!
• Since I did not order our pair with prescription lenses, I ended up wearing the Ray-Ban Stories over my regular glasses. This worked pretty well, but did look a little ridiculous…
• They are exceptional at capturing exactly what you are looking at. Perfect POV shot every time.
• There is a 30 second time limit for individual video clips. This may seem like not a lot of time, however it actually is great for capturing a single step of a process. (Proceed.app is all about bite-sized, step-by-step videos so it is perfect!)
• The video is very stable, hardly any shake!
• Since all of the photos and videos that you take with the Ray-Ban Stories are stored on the glasses, you don’t need your phone to operate.

Syncing the Ray-Ban Stories to the Facebook View App

After capturing photos and videos, all you have to do in order to pull them to your phone is open the Facebook View App. When there is content on the glasses that is not on your phone, there is a sync button that appears. After pressing that button, the Ray-Ban Stories automatically connect to your phone via WiFi in order to make a fast transfer. After the transfer the WiFi turns off and your phone returns to its previous network settings.

It is really important to note that images and videos in the Facebook View App are only stored locally, they do not touch any cloud-based servers. Facebook is pretty clear about that in their data handling statements and policies.

Editing in the Facebook View App

The Facebook View App gives you a lot of options for editing the photos and videos. We used the view app for two main adjustments: Crop and Trim

• We cropped all photos and videos to portrait (this is most common ratio for Proceed.app)
• We trimmed videos to get to focus on the important parts. We also frequently cut out the “Hey Facebook Stop Video” voice control at the end of clips.

Exporting from Facebook View App

It is really easy to export photos and videos from the Facebook View App. For our case, we saved our photos and videos to the device library which then makes it super easy to pull them into Proceed.app.

• There is a setting that automatically adds a copy of all photos and videos in the Facebook View App to your library. This is nice, however when you make edits to content it doesn’t reflect the changes into the library.
• It’s really easy to save photos and videos individually. There’s a save button when you are viewing something. There’s also a bulk select/save option.
• You can also email or text the photos and videos if you need to share them with others.

Conclusion

We have had a blast testing out the Ray-Ban Stories on the manufacturing floor. They are really a great way to capture POV visuals of processes and they pair perfectly with Proceed.app. If you have any questions or comments on using Ray-Ban Stories at your manufacturing company, I’d love to hear from you! Here’s my email.

Author: Andrew Schmitz

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