>nd light guiding elements to redirect incident light to a concealed sensor,

So you can't just stick on any existing window or pane of glass? That's good.

I don't think so. From the article:

> The Holocam technology "uses holographic in-coupling, light guiding and de-coupling elements to redirect the incoming light of a transparent medium to a hidden image sensor."

That suggests, at least to me, that you'll need something more than just a simple sheet of glass. There's probably some engineering required to allow light to be guided and redirected towards what sounds like a typical camera sensor.

Yes I interpret it as guiding light inside the glass such that the sensor is on the lateral aspect of the glass embedded in a glass frame perpendicular to the target image.

Sounds like they embedded a light splitter with some sort of periscope style lense inside a glass pane.

So not actually bolted oblique to the glass as GP suggested.

in-coupling and de-coupling of light, anyone care to explain?

I don't actually know what that specifically means in this case.

If I were to guess, I'd assume that "de-coupling" means "splitting the spectrum into RGB." RGB, because it's easy to reproduce for human viewing, but you could do this with other spectrums as well.

I imagine "in-coupling" refers to how they get the light to a sensor.

I used to worked for a company that would use lasers to "build" mirrors inside of blocks of glass. They could tune those mirrors to reflect just red, or just blue, or green, or any combo.

I can imagine using this sort of tech to build panels of glass that can route "de-coupled" RGB to travel spectrum specific sensors.

Or, it might be possible that they're just capturing the full spectrum of light, but using microscopic etchings or surface treatments to bounce light down a layer of glass, somehow bouncing "pixels" of light down the pane of glass in a way that isn't lost while capturing other "pixels".

I say "pixels", but what I mean is "a portion of the glass." If you think of the glass as the polished ends of fiber optic strands, all bundled together, each of them routed to a specific sensor pixel - that's sort of what I mean. If you can etch your prisms/combs/gates fine enough, you can have higher "pixel" density from your glass pane.

Then again, they're the lens experts and could be doing something else entirely. I'm really just guessing.

Edit: theres an actually good demo video showing the real state of the tech rather than mockups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ buried below in the comments so just surfacing higher. everything else is artists lying to you.

---

> Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.

what? holy shit?

Nah, this will only be good enough for sensor-level power (like 5W from a whole window). Only useful in very limited circumstances. It's not going to replace normal solar power.

but like, thats enough for the camera to power itself. pretty cool no? we can deploy this tech without plugging it in.

It is, but do you really want your windows to have integrated cameras? You can't just add this on to a window because the light is transported to the edge of the glass and that is inaccessible in normal windows.

>deploy this tech without plugging it in

you mean because it can also power a wireless transmitter or a large memory array storage? cuz a hologram that's not "plugged into something" might turn out to not be that useful.

Since you can run a PI on that level of power it seems enough?

I guess it might be not enough if the day is not sunny enough

5W is nothing to sneeze at.

5W is enough to power an ESP32

That video is pretty cool. Truly an invisible camera.

Thanks for linking to that.

> coupling, decoupling and light guiding elements to divert incident light to a concealed sensor

So, there's a camera in the dash looking up at the windshield and focusing where it expects to see a face, thereby using the windshield as a reflector? And maybe there's some additional etching and deposited films in the windshield to support the angles required?

And perhaps you can put cameras elsewhere, and similarly subtly modify the windshield or other glass to look at other things as well?

It collects through the edge, and the glass can be (apparently) flat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ

Wow. The original article was talking about doorbells and TV broadcast applications. That looks like the quality of the original moon landing broadcast.

>ESA and NASA space missions have carried this trailblazing ZEISS technology on board for many years. It is also well established in the semiconductor and medical technology sectors.

Huh. Seems like it should be fairly easy to find info on then... though some googling around makes me think they might just be referring to their more general diffraction gratings and whatnot.

Zeiss multifunctional smart glass

Product page: https://www.zeiss.com/oem-solutions/products-solutions/multi...

NASA/ESA mention: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zeiss_automotive-augmentedrea...

This looks really cool.

Could you put a polarizer on this and have that filler out the other side of the display, so a smart window is one way visible? That could make smart glasses and headsets much better.

I doubt you'd even need to. The fact that it's not a uniform grey blob means they're already controlling how the light leaves the device. I suspect it's already directional.

First, holy crap!

Second, #3 is always a red flag for me. It is sometimes code for "we can do this in the lab but we have no idea how one would manufacture it." A similar analogy is "we've got this great idea for a program you can license but no one here knows how to actually code it up."

Third, the impact of this going mainstream would be hard to underestimate. All those people working on transparent displays like they do in sci-fi movies? Yup they could do that. A video conference system with solid eye contact (mentioned in a couple of places) sure you could do that too. A mirror that could show you wearing different clothes? Yup I could see how that would be coded.

That #3 though. That is what tempers my enthusiasm. Did I miss any announcement that they had a display at CES? (or was it just an announcement) If the former I would seriously consider flying over to Vegas to check this out.

> Second, #3 is always a red flag for me.

Does Zeiss manufacture any public facing camera currently ? All their general public facing projects are collaborations with Sony or Vivo or other makers, and I think they only manufacture lenses, so nothing with a high quality chip in it.

It's probably another story on the medical side, but this doesn't fit a highly specialized, peofessional only niche with a PC doing the processor on the side.

Here is a demo video from someone who was there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ (from another hn comment)

Ooh thanks for that! Showing monochrome only. I wonder if three layers of glass would get you color? And fixed focus (not too surprising) but that answers two questions I had initially.

As they claim this can also do display (presumably to replace the camera element with a projection element) it would be interesting to see what level of opacity they can achieve in a brightly lit environment.

If it was anyone but Zeiss I'd call it a red flag too, but they're basically Old Gods of Glass.

I don't disagree. One way to know if it can live up to the hype is that it will be the lighthouse feature of the next iPhone which will both not have a notch for the front facing camera, it will do "touch anywhere" touch ID and process all of the screen operating gestures visually rather than capacitively so that you can operate you phone while wearing ski gloves if you want too.