I spent the past 10 years working mostly with unusual displays: 3d stereoscopic screens, projection mapping, holography; so when I first read about th eHolus, an “Interactive Tabletop Holographic Display”, it piqued my curiosity. That moment soon passed as I noticed that the claims were hugely overblown. H+tech, the company behind Holus, broke several of Kickstarter’s rules, using photorealistic CGI, misleading language and obfuscation techniques to make their product appear considerably more impressive than it can ever hope to be. Their strategy proved successful and Holus reach it’s initial funding goal in 19 minutes!
Yet, their tech is nothing new. In fact it’s a repackaging of an old optical trick from the 19th century called a Pepper’s Ghost: basically a computer monitor reflected on a piece of glass.
What’s really messed up about this is the original video that most people saw with more CGI was removed and that KickStarter is totally OK with anyone putting a “KickStarter STAFF PICK” badge on any kickstarter without approval. Why wouldn’t Kickstarter have the creators to just start over at this point?
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
