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Look up "Short Throw Laser Projectors" it's somewhat possible with funky optics depending on how much distance you can afford.
Thanks. Can't seem to find how they work exactly except for "with mirrors!" remarks :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look up "Short Throw Laser Projectors" it's somewhat possible with funky optics depending on how much distance you can afford.
Thanks. Can't seem to find how they work exactly except for "with mirrors!" remarks :)
Current generation non-laser short throw projectors may already hit the price/performance you need, just mount them so they face the ceiling, on top of a bookshelf. (Laser projects are still quite expensive.) If they don't, then physics, specifically optics, has the equations to calculate the mirror specifications you need for your exact use-case. Custom-made mirrors aren't the cheapest, but what you're asking for sounds possible, though it's impossible to say without more information, specifically the dimensions and the brightness needed - you'll lose a lot of brightness from the mirrors.
The setup for Fishbug was two projectors facing a hemispherical mirror. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThtF-FY28hM
The 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..
No idea if it handles surround sound properly though, but considering phones are offered with HDMI outputs and there's the whole Android TV lineup I'd imagine there's some kind of support in there.
Pretty cool, but just buy a damn projector. Do not approach this as something practical that's going to be useful, because it's not. It's huge, probably loud, you'll get dust and stuff stuck in all sorts of places messing with the image and it lacks advanced focusing like keystone transform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_effect
I built a similar LCD projector when I was in high school! Same basic principal as is used here, shine light through a bare LCD panel (mine was from a broken laptop), add some fresnel lenses and a focusing lens and throw it all in a box. Pretty cool, but just buy a damn projector. Do not approach this as something practical that's going to be useful, because it's not. It's huge, probably loud, you'll get dust and stu…
It was a cool project and when it was just me and a friend sharing an apartment, we didn't care that it was janky (especially since any large format screen was way too expensive for us at the time). But now you can get better performance from a cheapo projector and for a bit more, you can even find decent short-throw models these days.
My current project (that is collecting dust) is a big dual-lamp auditorium sized Epson that I snagged when it was getting tossed out at work. Sadly, while it was working when I picked it up, somewhere along the way from the office and through a couple of moves the auto-iris got stuck/damaged.
It's the most frustrating thing because the projector works fine but when it powers on, there's an error message stating that the auto iris has an error and it won't let you proceed. I don't even care about the auto iris and while I've dismantled it quite a bit and blown out/lubed everything I could find, I still get the error. Apparently they all had this problem but it's way out of warranty and I don't see much point in paying to have a free projector repaired.