from Hacker News

One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

by tiplus on 12/2/16, 8:19 PM with 114 comments

• by Arcsech on 12/2/16, 8:41 PM

  Glasses are a total racket. Purchasing your glasses online is many, many times cheaper than going to Lenscrafters or basically any other brick & mortar store in the US. I've been buying online for years and they're every bit as good as usual ones. You do need your pupillary distance, but you either measure this yourself with the help of a friend, or ask your optometrist. If they refuse or tell you how evil buying glasses online is, get a new optometrist.

  The best sites I'm aware of are:

  http://www.zennioptical.com/ (what I use)

  https://www.goggles4u.com/

  https://www.39dollarglasses.com/

• by Johnny555 on 12/2/16, 8:37 PM

  My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :)

  Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expensive pair was ready from my eye doctor).

  And I bought a second pair of backup glasses for less than my eye doctor wanted for his "lens protection insurance".

  Though admittedly, I have a simple, low-power prescription (< -3.0, no astigmatism), so your milage might vary with a more complex prescription.

• by nickff on 12/2/16, 8:28 PM

  This is fantastic, and I will definitely be making a donation, but I think they would benefit from taking a page out of the Lucky Iron Fish book, and sending a pair of the glasses to donors who contribute 50 dollars or more. I have found the Lucky Iron Fish I have to be helpful in convincing others to donate, and I think having a pair of these glasses could similarly make the project more tangible to prospective donors.

  http://www.luckyironfish.com/

• by sboselli on 12/2/16, 9:28 PM

  Why aren't these kind of hardware driven campaign fully open source?

  Why is there not a pdf with plans and clear cut instructions on how to build the wire bender (which at 2500 Euros is absolutely insane)?

  I understand using the money for funding more glasses makes sense, but in reality if your mission is for this hardware breakthrough to improve everyone's life all around the world, why hide and hog the design?

  I'd like to build this in my machine shop in the other corner of the world, why send 2500 Euros to Germany? I just don't get it. It makes me think of ulterior motives and when that happens I quickly lose faith in the organization. Everyone loses, the cause itself being the most affected.

• by rosstex on 12/2/16, 8:37 PM

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM

  Luxottica currently owns 80% of the eyeglass business

• by Animats on 12/2/16, 11:16 PM

  How do they do cylindrical axis with a small inventory of lenses and non-round lenses? The three parameters for lenses are spherical radius, cylindrical radius, and axis of the cylinder. A complete set of a good range in all three is large, which is what leads to custom lenses.

  There's a known way to cut costs with round lenses. With round lenses, you can have a small inventory of premade lenses with only two parameters. The axis is set with a little notcher that makes a notch which locks it to a bump in the frame, so it can't rotate. These have been used in India for decades. There's an optical store in an attache case.

  If the One Dollar Glasses guys only use 25 different lenses, are they just blowing off the cylindrical correction entirely? Are these just "readers" like the ones available cheaply at most drugstores? Those you can get on Alibaba for $0.75 each in bulk.[1]

  [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Premade-Distance-Glas...

• by tiplus on 12/2/16, 8:32 PM

  The guy is a physics teacher who invented a small wire bending device which is used to make the glasses locally anywhere at material costs of 1$.

• by saboot on 12/2/16, 9:19 PM

  It's pretty amazing how much extra cost most glasses cost. And this comes at a very steep cost for most people. I've worked with a charity organization called Remote Area Medical (RAM) which provides free medical, dental, and vision care. Lots of people are there because they can no longer see, cannot get a job because of it, and thus have no money. RAM can create a vision prescription, prepare the lenses on the spot, and give a patient glasses for a cost of $15 in an hour, patients dont pay anything. We really need to do more in making cheap glasses more available to people in the US.

  Here is one person's struggle in getting glasses while poor (clip from 2008, but we see this at clinics constantly) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfraBGSGg8

• by randyrand on 12/2/16, 8:30 PM

  I got 4 pairs of glasses on amazon (needed the opposite of reading glasses which are hard to find in stores) for $8. I was pretty darn impressed by how cheap the free market is vs doctors offices.

• by HoyaSaxa on 12/2/16, 9:44 PM

  This is obviously a really admirable cause, and as someone who wears contacts, I couldn't imagine not having access to corrective lenses.

  Just a word of caution to anyone considering making a donation, their donations page is not served over HTTPS. Their unsecured page renders an iframe [1] from their payment processor that is served over HTTPS though. I haven't tested it, but you should be able to make a donation securely via that link.

  I reached out to them to let them know and offered some assistance.

  [1] https://secure.fundraisingbox.com/app/payment?hash=UuYpAgAJ0...

• by ren01r on 12/2/16, 9:15 PM

  I am using prescribed glasses since I was in 3rd grade. I feel like I'm wasting money when I spend more than 1000 INR (around 15 USD) on glasses. I can't imagine spending 700 USD on glasses. I can live on that money for about 4 months with that money.

• by Tempest1981 on 12/4/16, 10:29 AM

  Related: work is also being done on a $1 microscope -- to identify disease in poor countries, and/or for education/classrooms. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/525471/the-1-origami-micr... and http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/origami-microscope-les...

• by fmavituna on 12/3/16, 11:52 AM

  It's a bit (actually a lot) worrying that their donation page that you enter personal and credit card info is not over HTTPS. Possibly it will significantly decrease the donations they'll receive online.

• by PinguTS on 12/2/16, 9:17 PM

  The comments are very interesting. I think glasses are a very specific issue. The question is: do want perfect view or just want to see something better.

  For better view this is great.

  But for the developed world it is not comparable. Either because the eyeglass frame should follow some trend, or the glasses itself needs some additional threatment.

  For example, my glasses are 'cheap' even as I need special glasses. Yes, the diopter are different between left and right. But much more important is the parallax compensation for me. My optician exchanges the glasses even for free, if they don't fit. So online, is realy not an option.

• by dirkg on 12/3/16, 2:09 AM

  Buying glasses in Asia or online is so much cheaper than the scam run by Lenscrafters, most optometrists in the US. Its sold as a designer product where you spend $$$ on frames, the glass material with fancy treatments, and they charge you maybe 5-10x the actual costs.

  I have ordered from Goggles4u, Zenni etc and these places must have razor thin profit margins, they always have coupons and its dirt cheap, never had issues with the quality of the lenses. You can always go to any optometrist/Costco etc and get the lens checked out to confirm.

• by StephenConnell on 12/2/16, 9:10 PM

  I have found purchasing glasses can be hit or miss weather I buy $600 glasses or less that twenty dollar glasses. I may miss a bit more with cheap glasses, but I can take a lot more shots.

  I've used zennioptical.com and it has worked really well. I've run into frames that do not fit, but they were cheap mistakes and once I found something I liked, I just reorder every few years.

  Paying attention to the frame measurements is pretty important if you buy online.

• by ohstopitu on 12/2/16, 9:28 PM

  I will definitely be donating. I've had glasses since I was 3 and I understand how expensive they can be. (as a kid, I used to break mine often and my parents would have to pay insane amounts of money to get new ones).

  From what I understand, the frames themselves are just overpriced[0]

  [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H-_8UkmFU

• by dingleberry on 12/2/16, 9:49 PM

  mass produced chinese glasses beat it first

  i bought a dozen negative glasses for $15 five years ago at chinatown in Jakarta, Indonesia; should be cheaper in china.

  same model, same power, but can't choose color.

  the retail is available so i can choose model, power, color, etc for $2 per glasses

  I also bought a +4 glasses for less than $1, metal frame. positive glasses are cheaper maybe because there's less demand.

  their quality depend solely on material, not price. my more stylish glasses (no-frame-around-glass, flexible handle) lasts about 3-6 months on heavy use. sturdier styles (harry-potter-styele, thicker plastic frame) lasted more than a year till my-then-baby-boy tore it forcefully from my face. my <$1 positive metal frame glasses seem to last forever.

  nb: i wear positive lens everyday for my eye training and choose to no longer wear negative lens; therefore, i haven't bought any lenses for about three years; however, the prices are still about the same last time i checked at jakarta's chinatown.

• by dba7dba on 12/2/16, 9:18 PM

  I've heard that all these different brands in eye glasses industry are mostly owned by just a few holding companies. Hence the high price for everything related to eye glasses.

  Never bothered to actually check but I remember hearing that in a podcast.

• by Namrog84 on 12/2/16, 8:34 PM

  The site makes it look like exclusively a charity? I can donate and that means someone gets glasses. But can I buy them for myself or a friend as well? I couldn't find the answer (on mobile)

• by kefka on 12/2/16, 9:02 PM

  So, where can I buy high quality sunglasses (have 20/15 vision)? Obviously junk doesn't cut it, and I really don't want to feed the Luxottica monster.

• by rtfs on 12/2/16, 8:33 PM

  why are these glasses so cheap?

• by sangd on 12/2/16, 8:41 PM

  I wore cheap glasses for the last ~15 years, my eyes are still 20/20 the last time I checked which was ~3 months ago.