Dave’s Cool Toys Blog

This is amazing. I am completely stunned by this little bit of technological wizardry. I don’t wish to plug General Electric, but this is so much fun to do, I couldn’t help but post it.

At the GE Ecomagination website, you can view and participate in this very cool demonstration. I’m not sure what it says about GE exactly, but it is impressive. The call it a hologram, but anyone that knows anything about holograms would agree that it’s a completely innacurate term. It’s more like a 3-D interactive virtual reality thingy. They also call it Smart Grid Augmented Reality.

First, you need a printed Solar Panel Marker. What? You don’t have one? No problem. The website says "if you don’t already have one" you can print it from a pdf which you can download there.

Next, you need a webcam and you’ll need the latest version of Flash.

Once you have all that you’re ready to experience this cool technology. From the Ecomagination Smart Grid site, you click on either "Launch Wind Turbine" or "Launch Solar Energy".

This will open a window which should display the image from your webcam. Make sure you are in the frame, then pick up your Solar Panel Marker and hold it up for the camera.

Now the magic begins. In the image, from the center of your printed Solar Panel Marker sheet, a landscape will unfold complete with windmills (or solar panels, depending on which you chose) and the Smart Grid scarecrow, which you may have seen on their commercials. Tilt and move the paper and the entire landscape tilts and moves with it. Blow into your microphone, and the wind turbines will begin to spin. The scarecrow even waves. I had some trouble with the Solar Energy version. It kept crashing my browser. But the Wind Turbine version worked extremely well.