Dr. Masahiko Inami, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, recently tweeted a picture of an incredibly small, homebrewed 3D-tracked sensor module that has us reeling at the implications for ever-smaller tracked objects in VR.

Update (July 10th, 2018): Project creator George Chernyshov got in contact with Road to VR to correct some items in this article.

Despite Dr. Masahiko Inami’s claim the sensor module seen in the photo above was a “Vive tracker,” Chernyshov tells us it is “indeed not a Steam VR compatible tracker by itself, just a sensor module with an amp and filters, but when attached to an xx MHz MCU that can measure time with microsecond resolution it can “know” where it is in 3d space.”

Chernyshov and Krylova’s project is partially based off hardware developer Alexander Shtuchkin’s work, which uses a Valve SteamVR base station to positionally track and autopilot a drone.

Chernyshov tells me there are a few distinctions here that separate it from a true SteamVR basestation-compatible sensor module, although a similar SteamVR basestation-compatible unit could be of comparable size:

“[I]f it is used for VR, then it would obviously require some sort of link to the computer that renders the VR scene. However the projects it was made for do not require any VR and an MCU that knows where the sensor is in 3D space is enough. But there’s no reason why a Lighthouse-compatible (note, officially not SteamVR-compatible, though I see no reason why not) tracker can’t be of a comparable size.”

Regarding the price, Chernyshov told me this: “This device can indeed be used with the Vive Lighthouse system, but with a few extra components. The price of the components in quantities we ordered was indeed below 300 JPY. The quantities were below one hundred, but still more than DIYers normally would order.”

A special thanks goes out to Bernd Kreimeier for helping with corrections to this article. I’ve replaced the words “SteamVR tracker” with “3D-tracked sensor module” to better reflect the critical distinction listed above.

A corrected version of the original article, which was first published June 6th, follows below: