The quality and attention to detail seen in [Ian Martin]’s build is impressive regardless of his choice to build a functioning holochess set. We’re not to take away from the nerd-gasm this build invokes, but we’d rather draw to attention the craftsmanship of the builder. Sadly [Ian] doesn’t have a proper blog or product page but you can view everything he posts about the project on his social networking page and get his take on the finished work in the video below.
This build is not just a well engineered mechanical design, the electronics that run the controls and indicators are [Ian]’s home brew Arduino Mega shields. A complete game requires two sets of electronics, one for each side of the table so rolling his own shield was probably a space saving decision.
Each of the figures used as game pieces were hand sculpted and painted (is that a Rancor to the right?). User controls are presented in true-to-form fashion with 54 buttons, 26 lights, 10 knobs, and an LCD screen with custom bezel to display custom monster status. Nope, the monsters aren’t animated holograms but to make up for that [Ian] built in ambient noises so you know which are still alive. This is our first time discovering that there is a name other than “Holochess” for the game: Dejarik. We’ll leave it up to the reader to figure out how it’s played.
This is an impressive build and we can’t wait to see what else [Ian] comes up with in the future. We have covered Star Wars builds before and some interesting board game builds but never where the two meet before this.
Looking great
Just remember to let the Wookie win.
Nah, I think Ian wins this one.
Aw! No holograms? That’s why I came!
It might not be unpossible to cover the board with holograms, perhaps one per position is simpler. Then depending on where it’s lit from, a particular piece could appear. Multiple holograms activated by lights has been done before. Something for a holo-geek to produce.
Holography’s never really taken off as a hobby, I remember reading a book years ago that told you how to do it. And that was before diode lasers. With the laser, the hardest part, being so simple nowadays, no high-voltage power or expensive tubes needed, I’m a bit surprised. Sounds tricky but rewarding.
Maybe when holographic storage gets here, people will hack that. Might just be a matter of hacking the equivalent of Lightscribe, then just crack the casing of your holocube, Bob’s yer uncle! Maybe…
there are holography kits available on amazon. but it’s still on glass plates. I think something like castAR, hololens, or magic leap would be more suitable for making the starwars chess dream a reality. I’ve got a castAR dev kit and it comes with a pretty good starwars chess style scene as one of the demos…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3HGrclGkIE
pretty interesting what can be done with these real world volumetric display technologies.