Home made projector!

[Daniel ~]

Well done Big C!

[Chernobyl]

Cheers Daniel

Here goes!
The first photo is demonstrate how the monitor looks before I took the scalpel to it.
To help prevent static problems I coated a piece of cardboard in tin foil (photo 2) and earthed it. I touched this before any contact with the monitors insides (not just for luck!).

[Chernobyl]

As always, mark the buttons before you forget, preferably with a better pen than that!
The chassis contains the lighting which is not required so it was removed.

[Chernobyl]

The ribbon cables need to bend a little more than the chassis allowed so the openings were made wider.
The chassis was slotted into the plastic front ever so conveniently. I took a close up of how it slotted in. This is very stable but a little top heavy. I will show the counterbalance in a later photo.

[Chernobyl]

The white spacers are little bits of rubber from the monitor that used to secure wires in place. Just the right size!
A quick test was performed to make sure it worked before putting it on the OHP.
The control panel was lashed in place with another piece of rubber behind (there are speaker terminals on the back at each end which prevent a short circuit against the chassis)

[Daniel ~]

The quality of the picture amazes me! Can you throw up a few more screen shots?

[Chernobyl]

Hehe, I'm rushing my **** off to get these up and a half decent commentary
....

2 angles of the projector in action.
Note the 20" fan has gone and a 120mm fan running at 7V is easily sufficient to cool the LCD blowing from the top only. There is no fan blowing underneath the panel. This is a great improvement.

Edit: Ah yes, the red spring counterbalance makes its appearance.
This will be replaced or done away with later.

The black picture demonstrates light reflections from the Plastic casing (the LCD is sitting in) affecting the projected image. I will have to paint it black and hopefully eliminate these.

Heres a quicky from Startrek and a Starsky shot just cos I can.

[Daniel ~]

Thanks Big guy!

[Chernobyl]

And finally Xmen the movie and Half Life 2 screenshots.
I tried to get a Need For Speed Underground 2 shot, they are always blurred with car action.

I can do some more if there are any requests.
Some time soon I will write a report on any points worth knowing through the building and using of it.

Blue looks a bit Cyan and white is a little yellow, but completely forgiveable.
Suffice to say, it takes a while to set the colours up. It does look good!

[Chernobyl]

Quick points worthy of note for those with magnifying glasses out
All the photos will not be crystal sharp as I was holding the camera in my hand. The resolution is quite high and I used zoom on some photos.
All the movies shown so far are DivX/XVid's. I am not so impressed with the quality of these now, the projector "really" likes HDTV and DVD content.
I'll get back to you with some DVD coverage soon.

(the camera doesnt do the colours or the size of the picture justice. Shame you cant see it here )

[Chernobyl]

Originally Posted by DiabloAbogado

Can't wait! I've heard of this project before (someone was trying to sell the plans for it, but by using a TV instead of LCD) and always wanted to try it out. Your info will definitely help work out the bugs! Keep 'em coming!

Hi DiabloAbogado
I saw those too and was so tempted to try. Then I learnt you need to turn your telly upside down or fit mirrors and face the TV up. Someone else can try that, I like my tellly! (upside down telly is not good as they are designed with gravity coming from below!)

I will post a lot of points you may wish to know soon.
Its really nice but not perfect. A fair bit of tweaking is required to get it looking on par.


I've been watching Enterprise series 4 in HDTV quality. Incredible.
Gaming is fantastic too. Its hard to put down!

[Gizmo]

Another big Front Page, dude!

www.aoaforums.com

[Chernobyl]

Great, thanks Gizmo!

Now for some very good news.
I fitted a king size bed sheet (whitest I could find) from my ceiling and the colour issues are resolved!!!
White now looks white, blues look lovely and the screen is 8ft diagonal

Theres more work to do getting the colour balance right, not because its hard anymore, but the NVidia drivers dont play nice. Most adjustments are straight forward and work a treat.
At the moment, DVD's, OpenGL games and Windows desktop really look the part. Direct3D colours look washed out, the games seem to ignore my tweaks. This didnt used to happen.
DivX playback looks a whole lot better but is very dark. The Gamma setting will not affect the movie, not sure why. I'll clear all the driver settings and re-install them then work from there.
Fiddling with FFDshow helps a lot, but isnt simple enough and shouldnt be necessary.

My goal is to make setting this up as simple as possible with tweaks in the right places so the colour ranges lose least colour resolution (ie if you make the screen too bright, you get less colours to represent bright things. this makes close colours look the same colour). Changing configurations using multiple tools only serves to complicate the matter further.

I switched to using the projector as my only display (rather than clone etc) as changing colours for one particular screen sometimes affected the wrong screen or both! The above issues with D3D and DivX have started since then. Lots of playing round to do yet by the looks of it!
The drivers I am using are 71.09, time to try some WHQLs.

ps I wrote this in a 4ft box

[danrok]

How far back from the screen does the OHP need to be to fill the 8ft screen?

[fearless joe]

hello some random people, iv been looking into this for ages now,, i bought one of thoses stupid plastic things for my tv of ebay, but hay it was only 2.50, anyhow my point, the only things stopping my from lanching in to this are, one how easy is it to get an lcd apart with out screwing it, but more to the point, does anyone know if i can connect a ps2 to the screen, cos the only way i can think is to do it through my pc, which id rather not do as it is proberly louder then your avarge jet fighter, or a tv for that matter, or would i have to get a tv card for my pc, ho hum, any thoughts
chears joe

[Chernobyl]

Danrok,
8ft diagonal picture is 8ft away from the screen too.
Heres a quicky screenshot.

There is still slight yellowing. It seems to not be there on first power up and fades in to very light yellow the longer its left on. I would have assumed this is due to heat, it is being kept very cool on the top and bottom of the LCD while I investigate.
Maybe the OHP's light changes as it heats up?
Its not bad, I only mention it because I should

[Chernobyl]

Originally Posted by fearless joe

hello some random people, iv been looking into this for ages now,, i bought one of thoses stupid plastic things for my tv of ebay, but hay it was only 2.50, anyhow my point, the only things stopping my from lanching in to this are, one how easy is it to get an lcd apart with out screwing it, but more to the point, does anyone know if i can connect a ps2 to the screen, cos the only way i can think is to do it through my pc, which id rather not do as it is proberly louder then your avarge jet fighter, or a tv for that matter, or would i have to get a tv card for my pc, ho hum, any thoughts
chears joe

Hi Joe
A PC capture card isnt the way to go. You need a device that lets you plug your PS2 into a PC monitor, there are a few around.
The project isnt for the faint of heart, but if you are determined you will get a nice result.

I managed to damage the first LCD despite knowing what to do. Take this as a warning that anything can go wrong, If you're not able to buy parts enough to try again, it may be wise to not do this. Should you feel strong in your abilities, thats another story

Have fun!

[Daniel ~]

Thanks for giving me a dignified way out Chernobyl! ":O}

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by Chernobyl

I read that you can make a stereoscopic projector from 2 OHP setups with horizontal & vertically polarised filters (using polarised glasses too). I'm not sure how I would get a page flipped image out to each projector though.

Indeed you can, but you definately need a screen that will retain the polarisation for it to work well. It would appear that many surfaces will affect the polarisation, leading to poor image seperation.

One possibility would be to use the stereo switching signal to alternately blank the LCD panels, but again, you might end up with bleed through due to the slowish response of the LCDs. Otherwise, you're back to using some kind of demultiplexor/frame buffer to keep the images current. I wonder what would happen if you held off the sync pulses from one of the LCD panels for a single frame?

Can you tell this is something I've thought about a bit?

[fearless joe]

hay, chears Chernobyl

im deffinatly gona have a go, im a bodgea at heart, ill make anything work, and i didnt know that you could get a ps2 to moniter things, have to get me one of those, the only reason i wanted a tv card was so i could watch tv, i done supose there are any tv cards out there can just plug into a moniter, or better then that a freeview box that has a monitor connection on it, maby even an lcd one (if your not english, freeview is digital box that plugs in to the tv to give you 30 channels)
ill be sure to leave some pics, i have a cunning plan to put two lots of ohp electronics,2 bulbs in one ohp, double lumens, not sure if that will work though, as one wont be in the middle, think i may blag my electronics lectures help lol
ill keep you lot up to date
joe