Video projector from an old single-slide unit - Hack a Day

Video projector from an old single-slide unit

posted Feb 24th 2011 4:45pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: video hacks

Here’s a video projector that [Matt] hacked together. He needed a small and inexpensive solution to use with his R2D2 build. As you can see in the video after the break, it has no problem playing back the Princess’ distress call. But even if R2D2 is not one of the droids you’re looking for, we think this can be useful in other ways. One use that pops into mind is for projector-based Halloween displays.

As with past projector hacks, all you really need to pull this off is a light source, an LCD screen on which you can playback video, and a lens to focus the light onto a screen. Usually the LCD is the most expensive part of the project and building an enclosure to the correct dimensions can be a bit difficult. [Matt's] solution was to use an MP4 knockoff media player. The rest of the setup is a ’50s era slide projector. The screen from the media player is about the same size as a single film slide, so he removed the screen from the case and put it where the slides go.

R2D2 - Holoprojector (Prototype)

Video Link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seKHgC4qkDY&feature=player_embedded

tagged: lcd, mp4, projector, slide

Built a unit identical to this back in 1996; only problem is that the contrast of the LCD drops as the temperature increases. At operating temperature, the colors are so washed out as to be useless.

Posted at 5:34 pm on Feb 24th, 2011 by Dubmuffin

Have you tried a 1W+ LED as the lamp? I built a static projector with a Cree 1W (back in the day, when they were hip and new :v), and it’s been running cool and happy for years.

Posted at 5:49 pm on Feb 24th, 2011 by Jon

I did a similar thing with an old slide projector and an lcd from a 1.5″ digital photo frame. The problem with these projectors are the bulbs get awfully hot. Some early projectors don’t even fans (like my old SVE Entertainer 300). I ended up replacing the 300w bulb with an LED. A lot safer (albeit dimmer), and still can be fanless, even fully battery operated.

Posted at 5:59 pm on Feb 24th, 2011 by alxy

Knockoff MP4 media player – that’s a great idea for a component source for this!

Posted at 6:20 pm on Feb 24th, 2011 by JC

Its a nice hack,
however to get it smaller you might consider a beagle board and a pico projector.
Pico projectors clones goes for 100-150 Euros already.
The beagle board could be used for other control purposes as well.

Posted at 7:06 pm on Feb 24th, 2011 by Torwag

Go there...
http://hackaday.com/2011/02/24/video-projector-from-an-old-single-slide-unit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Don