We’ve seen Raspberry Pi hologram initiatives earlier than however that is the primary one we’ve seen that features as a Christmas tree. This challenge, created by Sean Hodgins, makes use of a Raspberry Pi 4 and depends on the precept of persistence of imaginative and prescient. This precept makes use of an LED strip to “paint” gentle at a particular velocity. Utilizing the tree’s rotation, it shows customized 3D results in mid-air that on this case resemble a festive vacation evergreen.
This tree is constructed from a steel, triangular body. It’s mounted to a bigger body that has a motor able to spinning the triangle right into a cone at 10 Hz. The tree is able to displaying each static and shifting pictures. This makes it attainable to show a easy tree or cartoon pictures and, in a single demonstration, a flaming tree.
Hodgins was form sufficient to share a video breaking down the challenge’s development course of. The steel body was constructed totally from scratch. Hodgins might be seen chopping the steel, mounting it collectively and making modifications as he went alongside to plan essentially the most purposeful finish outcome.
On the high of the steel body is a motor linked to a slip ring that may ship energy to the LED strip whereas it spins so there’s no concern of wires getting tangled. A bearing is on the base of the triangle body to offer assist whereas it rotates. A Raspberry Pi 4 drives the operation together with a step down converter going from 12V to 5V and a fan for the motor. A magnet is connected to the highest of the triangle body that passes by a hall-effect sensor so the Pi is aware of precisely when a full rotation has been achieved.
The code was written in Python and relies on an present library from Adafruit. There are plans to share the code for the challenge to GitHub however in the mean time the challenge web page just isn’t but stay.
If you wish to recreate this Raspberry Pi challenge your self, try the video shared by Hodgins over at YouTube and you’ll want to observe him for future updates.