Summary
-
This Raspberry Pi project uses the Pepper’s Ghost illusion to create a hologram dancer that plays along with your Spotify playlist.
-
Pi 5 determines the BPM and genre of the current song, choosing from 80 dances to match the beat.
-
The code has not yet been published, but is expected to be shared once it is ready.
Some of my favorite Raspberry Pi projects use the Pepper’s Ghost illusion. This is a cheap and easy way to create a hologram that appears to materialize out of thin air. However, I think this project that makes you do an illusion dance on your Spotify playlist is probably my favorite application of the technology.
The Pepper’s Ghost Spotify Dancer is the coolest way to listen to your favorite tunes
Hopefully the code will be uploaded soon
in an article about The Raspberry Pi subreddituser koges showed off the first project they finished with the SBC. They chose a music player that displayed a dancing hologram using Pepper’s Ghost to remove the illusion.
If you’ve never heard of Pepper’s Ghost, it’s a classic theater play that’s been around since the 19th century. When theaters wanted to portray a corporeal entity appearing out of nowhere (like a ghost), they set up a clear, angled glass panel on stage. Then offstage, a well-lit actor played the role of the ghost. When the glass is right-angled, the audience sees the actor’s reflection without seeing the glass itself, giving the impression of a spectral presence.
When someone uses Pepper’s Ghost in a Raspberry Pi project, they usually hide a screen in the base, then build an angled clear glass panel on top of it. When done right, anything you put on the screen is reflected off the glass, giving it a hologram appearance.
Armed with this knowledge, the koges used their newfound power on Jax The Amazing Digital Circus Dance to a Spotify playlist. This isn’t just any casual dance; The all-in-one Raspberry Pi 5 can detect the BPM and genre of a song and select one of 80 dances to match.
At the time of writing, koges has not published the code, but according to their comments on the thread, they want to learn how to do it. Here’s hoping they find a way.
