Watch 3D Holograms on Your Smartphone with This Easy DIY Setup

Did you know you can turn a regular smartphone into a 3D holographic display. The future is now, people! In his recent video, James from The Action Lab shows you how to view 3D objects from any angle using a fairly simple setup and just a few tools. So, let’s dive right into how it works and how you can create your own 3D hologram.

The science behind the illusion

To understand how this holographic effect works, James explains a concept called Persistence of Vision. This is a trick your brain plays on you—when an image disappears, your eyes still “see” it for a tiny fraction of a second.

A great example is how lights appear to blend together. If you flash red, green, and blue lights one after another fast enough, your brain sees them as a single purple light. This happens because your eyes don’t reset quickly enough between flashes. However, if the lights are not in the same area of the frame, you can see them as separate colors. James demonstrates with a ball with a set of lights, showing how they merge when viewed together and split when he spins the ball. Pretty cool!

Anyway, the same principle applies to making this 3D hologram. By controlling what part of an image you see at a time and spinning it quickly, your brain stitches the images together into a 3D object.

The setup

To create this effect, James builds a spinning display using:

• A smartphone to display the images
• A turntable to rotate the display
• A cylinder with a viewing strip to control what part of the screen is visible at any moment

The cylinder has a narrow cutout that reveals only a slice of the phone’s screen at a time. When the cylinder spins fast enough, your brain puts all those slices together, making it look like a solid 3D object floating inside.

The trick to making the object look fully 3D is updating the image on the phone’s screen as it spins. Instead of showing a single still image, the phone displays a sequence of slightly rotated images—kind of like an animation. When the phone and cylinder rotate at the same speed, the image changes in sync with your perspective, making it look like a real 3D object floating in space.

This is what James calls a parallax multi-view 360° display. No matter where you stand around the cylinder, you see a different angle of the object, just like you would in real life.

Building your own holographic display

If you want to try this at home, here’s what you need:

• A smartphone to display the rotating images
• A small turntable, like a mini pottery wheel (available for about $30)
• A 3D-printed cylinder with a cutout strip (James provides a downloadable file for this)
• A link to the pre-made rotating images (provided by Peter Pjanic, who helped refine this idea)

The biggest challenge is making sure the phone’s display’s rotation matches the cylinder’s rotation. If they don’t sync perfectly, the effect falls apart, and it just looks like a spinning image. You may need to fine-tune the turntable speed every few minutes to fix this. Advanced users can even use a synchronization sensor to correct any drift automatically.

James is excited about the potential of this homemade 3D display. It’s a simple but powerful demonstration of how our brains process images, and it opens up possibilities for future holographic tech. I’d say it’s a shame he didn’t use a hologram of Princess Leia, though. :) Still, his demonstration is amazing as always, and make sure to watch his video and give this project a try.

[Your Smartphone Can Make 3D Holograms! | The Action Lab]