I just got back from a trip to Disney, so between the Haunted Mansion being on my mind and Halloween being right around the corner, this impulse buy was unavoidable. I saw people posting this Hologram Crystal Ball on social media with uploaded videos of Madame Leota from HM. It turns out, you can upload your own videos to it (like I said, this was a no-brainer).
The Impulse Buy
I ordered the Gemmy / Haunted Living Hologram Crystal Ball from Lowes.com for $80 (item #7950690) and it showed up the next day. The stock videos were cool but I was excited to upload my own stuff. I installed the app (Google Play only for now, which feels good when most apps are iPhone first), connected to the devices local wifi network, and uploaded my first video (my daughter doing The Undertaker eye-roll so you only see the whites). It looked awesome.
Next, I uploaded a video of Madame Leota that I had downloaded from YouTube, but I quickly hit an issue.
Why my videos wouldn’t upload
When you upload a video in the app, the first step is where you set the crop. The display is circular and the app allows you to set what part of the video shows in the globe. This part worked fine, but when it would start the transfer, it would just reset the screen with no error message.
I tried the normal stuff. Compressing the video, trying different source videos, but nothing would work. So I went back to that original social post and found the source video they used. Theirs was 58 seconds, while mine was just over a minute.
Once I reduced the video length, everything worked. I can’t say this is the definitive root cause but it certainly seems to be.
Then I made my own videos
The Madame Leota video looks great, but I wanted more. So I hopped over to Gemini and started creating 10 second videos to upload to the device. Some looked great, some were just ok, but it was still a fun process.
Here are a few I made, in case you want to use them yourself.
You can view the full playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPme6qe-ZRs&list=PLP2gEaE14RoQ
What I’d do differently
There’s not much I’d do differently. I would definitely reduce video lengths as mush as possible. And when using Gemini to make new videos, I’d be sure to prompt for the circle, not for a rectangle.
Otherwise, I’m just enjoying this decoration and prepping for the rest of my Halloween setup.