The super low-cost version of this is a magnifying glass and a shoebox - it works surprisingly well if you're only throwing a few feet in a dark room.
DIY True 4K Projector
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#32This is so awesome! Back in 2008 I built a projector from an old unsued laptop and a high powered metal halide overhead projector that I bought off ebay for 50 bucks. It was surprisingly good looking; I was very happy for the total investment. It was unwieldy and pretty power hungry, but none of that really mattered living in my college dorm at the time. When the laptop screen eventually gave up (I think just the con…
In 2006 or so I did the same, building a projector out of a laptop LCD (without the laptop, just a plain LCD module and a controller), some lenses, a fresnel lens (cut in half, one part before and one after the LCD) and a 400 watts mercury vapor lamp usually intended to be used to light up factory halls. I constructed a housing for it from wood, a cooling system using lots of PC fans to vent that 400 watts of heat, and even a microcontroller-based control system for the entire thing, with a small LCD display, which managed stuff like tracking bulb used time, monitoring internal temperature via a temp sensor IC and letting the cooling system run for some time after turning off the lamp to get the heat out.
That thing was heavy and loud as hell, and it wasn't very bright considering it used 400 watts of light power, but it was about half the price of an equivalent projector back then, which effectively allowed my poor student self back then to enter the home cinema scene, which I couldn't have afforded otherwise.
There even was an entire little scene back then of DIY projector enthusiasts (at least in Germany) with bulletin boards and even some niche online shops specialized in selling suitable lenses and LCDs and matching controller boards. It was great fun and a great learning experience, especially since you could get help from like-minded people and ideas from other people's projector projects.
A few years later it all quickly went down the drain when the first Full-HD projectors with acceptable quality dropped into price ranges that were affordable for the general public. It simply wasn't possible to compete with that anymore, neither in terms of quality nor in terms of price. I myself replaced my hunk of a self-made projector after about 4 years of use or so, with one of these entry-level full HD home cinema projectors (which I'm even still using today, so that was a really good investment in my book). But that self-made device was worth every cent and every hour of work, and I still have fond memories of building it and tweaking it for maximum quality and then watching movies with it, all the while thinking "man, I built that thing basically from scratch".
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
In principle, it is possible. A tilt-shift camera can bring any plane in focus, so running it in reverse will project the image sharply on your ceiling. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt–shift_photography for cameras. https://www.projectorcentral.com/Understanding-Lens-Offset-a... learnt me that you can buy projectors that use this method. I suspect that back-projecting televisions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Thanks, these are good leads.
My older Epson 8350 projector has a feature they call "Lens shift." When setting it up you make sure that it is perpendicular to the screen surface. Then it has two mechanical adjustments to vertically and horizontally shift the image. Page 25 of this user manual shows that it can shift the image vertically up to one image height up or down. And horizontally up to one half image width either way. It makes setup a lot more flexible. I'm not sure how common the feature is though on newer more available projectors.
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#34how about auto focus, with a laser that measures distance to trigger a motor that adjusts the focal point
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#35Since the right people might be reading through the comments here - I've been looking at making a hi-res ceiling projector for a living space. Perhaps not one, but a set of several projectors with an overlap, but the key point is that they need to be placed in a way so not to interfere with the normal flow of life. Nor to be easily shadowed by people walking around, etc. This (likely) mandates placing them around the…
I can't really answer your question directly, but check out teamLab Borderless[0] (also definitely go if you have the chance, it's an amazing time). They use 500+ hi-res projectors to cover the entire place in seamless imagery. Maybe you can find some more technical information regarding the installation.
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#36The audio seems to be a let down though: plug something into the (disassembled) phone's audio jack. I wonder if phones can deal with USB audio cards (that have surround options), or if there are any Bluetooth audio solutions that offer surround sound. Or I guess you can replace the phone with a PC/laptop, and have the display connected to an LVDS driver..
Wait. It's a phone. That means, it does have bluetooth. Or you can buy one of those dongles that are basically like a wireless aux cable (I forget the technical term for it)
Edit: Something of this sort: https://crossbeats.com/collections/all-products/products/con... (No affiliation to the company or the product)
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#37DIY Perks is a fantastic channel. So much good stuff, so little time to try everything :D
I know, right. My MacBook Air from 2015 went bust. I was looking for ideas to reuse some of the stuff when I encountered his "making a dual screen laptop video" [0]. There's ton of fun stuff he does with broken LCD screen, the camera module etc. I remember binge watching the entirety of his channel.
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#38Since the right people might be reading through the comments here - I've been looking at making a hi-res ceiling projector for a living space. Perhaps not one, but a set of several projectors with an overlap, but the key point is that they need to be placed in a way so not to interfere with the normal flow of life. Nor to be easily shadowed by people walking around, etc. This (likely) mandates placing them around the…
I can't really answer your question directly, but check out teamLab Borderless[0] (also definitely go if you have the chance, it's an amazing time). They use 500+ hi-res projectors to cover the entire place in seamless imagery. Maybe you can find some more technical information regarding the installation. [0] https://borderless.teamlab.art/
Haven't been there, but I've been to https://www.carrieres-lumieres.com/en and the sheer scale of it is absolutely mind-boggling.
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#39I never even knew Sony had released a 4k phone. What a clever way to kill two birds with one stone: Get an android system with a 4k screen but for 1/5th the price.
This guy is a true hacker.
Re: DIY True 4K Projector
#40He mentions that adding a reflector to the LED will reflect too much heat onto the LCD. Could this be solved with a pane of glass between the LED and the LCD to absorb the IR light?