The mist
Gold smoke
Between readings, gold smoke drifts through the glass. When a reading starts, its theme surfaces first as an omen in the smoke.
● Always on
Feature 02 · Grandmother Lupa's prop
The Crystal Ball
Knock twice. She'll read your cards.
- Glass
- 100 mm sphere
- Screen
- Round AMOLED
- Senses
- Knock, shake, lift
- Works with
- Grandmother Lupa
The deck
78 cards
The whole Rider–Waite deck lives on the ball's SD card. Each card rises out of the mist when Lupa turns it over.
▶ Played by Talos
It feels you
Knock, shake, lift
An accelerometer under the glass counts your knocks, one to four, and notices when the ball is shaken or lifted. It tells Talos, and Talos cues Lupa.
● Knock two to four times
Through the glass
Cards from the mist.
Judgement, the High Priestess, Strength: a few of the cards as they surface during a reading.
-
The deck
Rider–Waite, rising
On the workbench
How it's made.
A 100 mm glass sphere sits over a Waveshare ESP32-S3 board with a round 1.43-inch AMOLED screen, mounted upside down beneath the glass; the firmware flips every frame so the cards read the right way up. Clips are 466×466 MJPEG files on an SD card, and new firmware arrives over WiFi.
To Talos it is two devices: a video player and a sensor. It sits on Grandmother Lupa's cabinet. Knock two to four times and she starts a reading while the ball shows each card.
- Glass
- 100 mm sphere
- Screen
- 1.43″ round AMOLED, 466×466
- Board
- Waveshare ESP32-S3
- Senses
- Knocks (1–4), shake, lift
