Tiny Holo Cubic Display

this is a tiny Hol cubic display that fits in the palm of my hand it makes use of a unique and rather exotic display that relies on a beam splitter a high resolution screen is then strategically placed beneath it to project the illusion of a holographic 3D display against a transparent backdrop the result is surreal the visuals are crisp and appear to float in space creating a mesmerizing effect now you might be wondering what's the real value of a transparent display in this video I demonstrate its utility by creating an optical Red Dot site and show how some are even leveraging it to preview intricate 3D printed models but this is just the tip of the iceberg because in recent years Monumental strides have been made with tiny pixel technology and extended reality displays offering us a tantalizing glimpse into a Brave New World of immersive experiences breakout applications like Tupac Shakur's Cameo at Coachella and the unveiling of the Vegas sphere are redefining our interaction with display technology on the world stage but the real game Cher is just around the corner and I'm going to show you how to tap into this new wave of innovation like a pro now my journey began like most heroic sagas with me Doom scrolling the Deep recesses of AliExpress until I stumbled upon this Gem and I'll admit I usually approach such finds with skepticism wary of the lack of risk assessments and Technical documentation however living in Florida where we're no strangers to a disdain for safety measures I decided to take a chance this device cost me just shy of $13 and I was genuinely amazed when I powered it on for the first time and witness the stunning picture It produced best of all you can build one yourself thanks to its Reliance on esp32 open-source componentry the optical prism in this setup plays a crucial role in creating the holographic illusion as the software renders the visuals in reverse on the 1.3 in LCD screen the beam splitter a 1x 1 in glass prism is strategically placed directly on top of the screen the beam splitter then reflects the Reversed image creating a virtual image that appears to float above the display this technique is known as the pepper ghost illusion where light is reflected off the surface of the prism creating a transparent reflection that merges with the background giving the illusion of a holographic 3D display this is a simple yet effective way to create a holographic like effect using optical principles and clever positioning of components our device is powered by an esp32 Pico D4 microcontroller a compact yet powerful board known for its versatility in iot projects this microcontroller is the heart of our setup coord ating all functions seamlessly this device also features a Micro SD card slot for external storage allowing you to expand its capabilities and store additional data a ribbon cable connects the microcontroller board to the 1.3 in TFT IPS display this display boasts a resolution of 240x 240 pixels ensuring crisp and clear visuals for your holographic display the optical prism is made of k9l glass which just denotes the type of glass and it's ideal for creating this sort of holographic effect powering the device is a 5vt 1 aamp power supply while the USB type-c interface allows for easy connectivity and programming of the esp32 board the entire setup is housed in a 3D printed base providing a custom and sturdy enclosure for the components to enhance its capabilities the device is equipped with an mpu 6050 sensor this sensor combines a three AIS gyroscope and 3axis accelerometer allowing for precise motion tracking and orientation data this feature opens up a wide range of interactive and responsive applications from gaming to motion-based control systems we have the power to easily program this device using platform. flashing the all-in-one operating system with just a few simple steps okay so I'm just going to pop open cursor. and I already have my platform. IO project ready to go I can just go to the homepage here I can go to projects and then I can go over to aore Firmware corpo I'll leave the GitHub Link in the description below but I'll go ahead and open this and it's going to show this project right here and it has all the resources and dependencies and what I can do is I will go ahead and plug in my esp32 actually let's open up a serial monitor first and this will just show all the debugging information that we have so all we have to do to get this firmware loaded onto our esp32 is to click build and this is going to take a second and then we're going to click upload okay and so we can see that the device is rebooted and as we navigate through the apps it will register in the uh serial terminal so PC resources select Ed Stock app is selected heartbeat app anniversary snake 2048 Etc from there the possibilities are really endless we can extend the software with our own programs or tweak existing ones to fit our needs perfectly and I actually didn't know this but you can really have a fully functioning operating system without a keyboard mouse or microphone using just the gyroscope and accelerometer you can toggle through menu items simply tilt forward for 1 second to emper an app and then tilt back for 1 second to exit pretty cool right and there's a whole host of outof thebox applications like a handy weather app a stock market tracker games like snake a holographic clock fun visuals and much more however I wanted to customize my device further so I created a red dot display mockup in Photoshop and exported it as a PNG with a resolution of 240x 240 matching our displays resolution so we just flashed the firmware it's working as expected but now I want to get my own custom image onto this monitor I want to create a red dot Optical site just by way of example of what you can do so I'm going to come over to photoshop and I've already mocked up this site here uh you can see it's mostly transparent but it has a white outline a red dot in the middle and some guiding indicators right here so I'm just going to go to x export export as so the screen is 240x 240 so it's best if we stick to that resolution so I'm going to export I'm going to go to downloads I'm going to do red. site and we're going to save that and then we need to convert that to a file format that is compatible with the frameware that we have so the documentation said to use the lvgl image converter tool so I'm going to come over to this and we're going to go to lvgl version 8 and then we're going to use true color Alpha and then we're going to use rgb565 and then I'm just going to select my image should be in downloads red do site and this is going to convert it to a bin file I'm just going to call that final so uh red. site final.in so I'm going to disconnect the esp32 and then I'm going to grab the SD card you you do that by pulling back the uh clasp there and then we're going to put this into micro SD card and all you have to do is create a directory called images and then you just put the bin file in there so let's wait for this to pop up here I'm going to delete everything else in here for now and we are just going to open up another finder window and in our downloads we're going to go by date this guy right here okay okay I didn't quite hit the mark there let's throw it into here okay so now we have our directory that's really all we have to do okay so I'm going to remove the micro SD card come back over to cursor see we've disconnected that's fine I'm going to put the micro SD card back in here okay I think we're good to go and I'm going to power it back on okay we can see we're reconnecting right here good give it a second okay now we should be able to go over to the image app and there it is there is our Red Dot site right there so you could see how you could do some fun things with that this device also has a variant that can render 3D printing SC itics showcasing its versatility interestingly it's also recently been discovered that 7th Century painter vermier may have used similar Technologies to create his masterpieces inspiring modern artists to replicate his style using optical devices like these it's possible that he was more of a tinker or more of a geek and in that way I feel a kinship with him while I may not be painting like vermier I have been experimenting with various exotic displays such as a 1.28 in round LCD from wave share perfect for custom Smartwatch devices I've even managed to get a 3.5 in display working with my Raspberry Pi 5 and yes I've even played a little doom on it in a world obsessed with bigger and better there's something captivating about these tiny atypical displays and I believe we've only scratched the surface of their potential for more interesting emerging Tech check out this next video thanks

Channel: Data Slayer

Views: 39,156

Keywords: Data Slayer, Doom, beam splitter, holograph, pepper's ghost illusion, arduino, esp32, cursor.com, platformio, 3d printed models, optical prism display, lvgl, holocubic, weather station, MPU6050, ST7789 1.3-inch 240x240, ESP32-PICO-D4, 240x240, Octoprint, micro sd card

Id: RQGz9suElo8

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2024