We Built a Floating Hologram Using Victorian Trickery

We built a floating holographic display using a Raspberry Pi and a 150-year-old optical illusion. Meet Pepper Pi - a Raspberry Pi 5-powered Pepper’s Ghost display inside a glass dome that creates a floating, transparent UI. It’s part retro illusion, part modern embedded system, and entirely impractical in the best way. We combined: Raspberry Pi 5 Round LED display Glass dome Pepper’s Ghost optical illusion Custom 3D-printed base to build a floating “hologram-style” interface you can actually interact with. 🧠 What is Pepper’s Ghost? A 19th-century optical illusion that reflects images to create the appearance of a floating object. We modernised it using a Raspberry Pi-driven display system. 🧪 WHAT WE USED Raspberry Pi 5 (16GB) LED round display Glass dome Transparent reflector Custom 3D printed base 🔗 LINKS & FILES GitHub (code + 3D models): https://github.com/veebch/pepper Reflector calculator: https://www.veeb.ch/projects/the-vall... Joshua Ellingson:   / ellingson.tv   ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 The Dome Has a Secret 00:40 Why we abandoned the “perfect” radio case 01:55 Pepper’s Ghost explained 02:14 Mathematical interlude 03:24 Assembly 04:43 Does it actually work? 05:35 Demo 06:30 Giveaway 💬 SOCIALS VEEB Shop: https://www.veeb.ch/store GitHub: https://github.com/veebch Instagram:   / v_e_e_b   Facebook:   / veeb.projects   Email: [email protected] 🎬 CREDITS Clip from Napoleon Dynamite used under fair use for commentary/education. 🧇 GIVEAWAY Build it yourself or win ours. Leave a 🧇 waffle-themed poem in the comments for a chance to win the full kit (Raspberry Pi 5 included!). Ends March 26th, 2025 — global shipping included. #peppersghost #raspberrypi #diytech #physicalcomputing #hologram #veebprojec