John Dingley solved a real problem: the Sony ZV-E10 has no built-in electronic viewfinder, making it nearly useless in bright sunlight or at non-eye-level angles. His fix pairs the camera with XREAL video glasses as a hands-free viewfinder, giving him a live feed while retaining situational awareness of his surroundings.
The integration is not plug-and-play. The ZV-E10 outputs video over a fragile micro-HDMI port, while the XREAL glasses accept DisplayPort altmode over USB-C. Bridging those two formats requires a converter, cabling, and an external power bank, all of which threaten to turn a camera rig into a wiring disaster. Dingley avoided that by selecting minimal off-the-shelf components and designing a custom 3D-printed camera cage, published on Thingiverse as thing:7375591, that routes everything into a single USB-C output point with no soldering and no hardware modification. The cage also protects the ZV-E10's notoriously fragile micro-HDMI connector from stress damage.
Read the full piece for the specific converter and cable choices Dingley made to hit his size targets, and watch the embedded video to see how cable management, not signal conversion, turned out to be the hardest part of the build. The neck-strap solution for donning and doffing the glasses mid-shoot is worth five minutes of your time alone.
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