Adelaide pair bring hologram dream to life with Voxiebox Wil Tamblyn and Gavin Smith will be showing their hologram-making invention at the Maker Faire in Light Square. IT is a scene that sets up the entire Star Wars franchise. A hologram of Princess Leia appears from R2-D2 and utters the famous line "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." Mates Gavin Smith and Will Tamblyn are now close to bringing the technology to life after spending the past five years inventing their own 3D technology. "We are both mad keen inventors and have always been interested in making things out of junk that fills our sheds," Mr Smith, 41, of Belair says. says. After a few beers, we decided to make something totally cool, something that didn't exist - a holographic Princess Leia projector like we'd seen in Star Wars. Of course, we both thought it must be impossible as it didn't exist already, but decided to try anyway. The pair have just joined forces with three like-minded Americans to form Voxon, a company that will produce their "Voxiebox." The Voxiebox would produce 3D displays, viewable from 360 degrees, by projecting millions of points of light on to a very fast spinning or oscillating screen. "After many years of building, drawing, soldering, exploding, drinking beer, and spinning carved yams on electric drills with lasers pointing at them, we find ourselves at a very exciting time," Mr Smith says. Mr Tamblyn, 35, a software engineer from Parkside, says the "most obvious" application is for gaming, potentially reinventing the likes of classic arcade and board games in 3D. The Voxiebox might also be used for educational displays in museums and universities. The pair are finalising patent applications this week in the hope of showing off the latest prototype at the Mini Maker Faire at the Adelaide Fab Lab this Saturday. Mr Smith says existing, similar devices have been too large, prohibitively expensive or produced only low resolution displays. "There's never been a consumer grade version that can compete with a TV or an XBox," he says. We have already formed partnerships with several games developers and have (confidentiality agreements) with several leading technology firms, granting us privileged access to future technology not yet publicly available. The pair learned skills such as 3D printing and microscopic soldering at the Fab Lab in Light Square. "We spent four years in our sheds trying to achieve what we achieved in two weeks when the Fab Lab opened," Mr Smith said. It's been such a great place to not only learn about new techniques for making stuff, but a great place to meet other people and share ideas. It's vitally important it gets funded.