Raspberry Pi 5 ‘Pepper Pi’ transparent computer illusion

Raspberry Pi fans with multiple models will relate to the rationale behind the origins of the transparent computer. This community project comes fresh from the pages of the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. Happy #MakerMonday!

Documenting quirky makes comes naturally to creative couple Martin and Vanessa. Collectively known as Veeb, they’ve been making madcap designs accompanied by fun videos of each build for the past five years. Their latest project, Pepper Pi, makes use of a headless Raspberry Pi 5 they had available to recreate a Victorian illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost, in which an object appears to float in a glass dome. The project also has its roots in early 1900s stock tickers. Impressively, Pepper Pi functions as a perfectly usable transparent PC, too.

Pepper Pi recreates a Victorian mirror illusion in which an image appears to float

Seeing is believing

Originally conceived during lockdown, Veeb’s videos soon caught on (and meant they didn’t need to do quite so much worthy documentation!). Imitation is flattering, and when Martin and Vanessa realised other people enjoyed some of the videos they’d made combining old tech with new to create their own versions, they embarked on an ongoing series. “We started to hear about people reproducing what we’d done. That felt good and was enough to make us keen to keep sharing projects whenever we thought we’d done something vaguely interesting.” Veeb now have quite a following — 11,500 subscribers according to their YouTube follower clock.

The day-to-day business involves custom builds that “reimagine vintage design for contemporary living,” Martin tells us. “The Pepper Pi project was prompted by the fact that there are headless Raspberry Pi computers dotted about our office taking care of various tasks.”

Although “ever so useful”, a scattering of hardware components doesn’t produce quite the contemporary finish to their aspirational design studio that, say, scatter cushions or artfully placed houseplants might. Instead, the aim was to spruce things up and turn a selection of “Raspberry Pi computers into interesting things to look at.”

1920s ticker tape machines and Victorian illusions inspired this build, as Veeb’s video explains

Old hands

Martin and Vanessa have many Raspberry Pi builds under their belts. Here, they used a Raspberry Pi 5 to run the statistical package R: “we wanted to use something meaty for number-crunching”. However, the illusory effect with the screen could be done using “more modest hardware” — they have since created one using Pico. A previous project involving an old Super 8 video viewer showed them the potential of lower-resolution screens and how to make the most of them. They still use the Boostbox cyberdeck daily. As with the Pepper Pi project, it combined “a redundant bit of technology and something box-fresh.” 

The duo had fun seeing what they could make appear inside the glass dome

Their take on the 150-year-old Pepper’s Ghost illusion involves a pair of mirrors bouncing a hidden image to make it appear within a transparent dome they bought online. They had seen versions hidden in arcade cabinets, but managed to work out the trickery for themselves. It took a while before they hit on the idea of using a privacy screen to shield the image so it was not on obvious display. In Vanessa and Martin’s version, the source image is hidden behind an acrylic disc that they commissioned “a nice man in Germany” to laser cut. 

To the uninitiated, the dome simply looks like quirky desk furniture rather than a transparent PC

Originally, they set the viewing angle for the mirror to 45 degrees, but soon realised this didn’t work well for viewing the illusion when the Pepper Pi was sat on a desk and in use as a PC. Since the angle of the reflector is pretty important, Veeb created a shape calculator to assist anyone keen to recreate the project. 

With the trigonometry taken care of (and an optional screen attached), they ended up with “a functional computer that has a nice steampunk vibe.” You can even run it as an ornament that can act as a server while intermittently playing that hologram message Princess Leia sent via R2-D2. Martin fervently hopes someone will actually do this.

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