A Transparent Floating Display | Pepper Pi
There is something comforting about becoming predictable:
Here’s a computer that we built that incorporates something very old and something brand new.
The new bit is the Raspberry Pi with 16 Gb of RAM, the old bit is an old haunted house illusion from the 1800s. The ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ illusion is what makes the transparent display appear to be floating under the glass dome. It involves little more than an angled piece of transparent material.
A touch of maths
Putting it together it involved a touch of maths (don’t worry, we’ve that bit), some careful assembly, and a few tweaks to the Pi’s software to make it all work seamlessly.
The result is a functional computer that has a nice steampunk vibe. You can also make it run without a monitor/keyboard if you want to just have an ornament that can act as a server while intermittently playing that hologram message that Princess Leia sent via R2D2 (we’ve not tried that, but hopefully someone will).
Reflector Shape Calculator
If you want to change the reflection angle (eg if the machine is on a desk you are sat at then 60 (the 30 mentioned in the video is wrong) degrees might be a better angle for viewing) and don’t feel like doing any trigonometry, then use the calculator below to get your reflector shape. You can print it out and use it as a stencil.
mm.
°
You can find all the details in the video and in our GitHub repository.
