Image projector can be built in minutes - Hack a Day

Image projector can be built in minutes

posted Feb 25th 2011 2:01pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: misc hacks

There’s a pretty good chance that you already have everything needed to make this image projector. We thought that yesterday’s video projector was simple, but this one makes it look like a super-computer in comparison. [Esrun] grabbed a flood light, some transparency film, and a common magnifying glass for use in his still-image project. This is more-or-less an overhead projector without the mirror, but we though it was worth sharing in hopes that it would spark your imagination and produce some other projector-oriented hacks.

The real tricks in this build are alignment and focal length. A single piece of lumber was used to help keep everything in a straight line, leaving just the vertical alignment to account for. In order to get the image in focus, [Esrun] had to do some testing for positioning the transparency film and the lens. In the end he added strips of velcro to the base to make the components easy to move. He plans to add an enclosure and change from an incandescent bulb over to a set of LEDs. We’d like to see the addition of a carousel that can house multiple transparency sheets. That or a side-scrolling roll to give it more of a film-strip feel.

tagged: magnifying glass, projector, transparency

maybe if I put a transparent LCD instead of the slide, i could screen a video

Posted at 2:26 pm on Feb 25th, 2011 by ys0

No, no, no, don’t go with an LED light source, use a kerosene lamp, go real old school!

Posted at 2:53 pm on Feb 25th, 2011 by Hirudinea

Thats not lumber, thats a sustainable organic optical bio-rail.

Posted at 3:00 pm on Feb 25th, 2011 by macona

RE: Hey macona… “Thats not lumber, thats a sustainable organic optical bio-rail.” I’m still laughing at that one!:) And here I thought it was just a Board. Guess you really do learn somthin new every day;)
Don

Posted at 6:52 pm on Feb 25th, 2011 by Don

Go there...
http://hackaday.com/2011/02/25/image-projector-can-be-built-in-minutes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Image projector can be built in minutes

Image projector can be built in minutes - Hack a Day

Image projector

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

Don

FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE Announcement

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:

• Xen HVM support in FreeBSD/amd64 and Xen PV support in FreeBSD/i386 improved

• ZFS on-disk format updated to version 15

• aesni(4) driver for Intel AESNI crypto instruction set

• BIND and OpenSSL updates

• Gnome updated to 2.32.1

• KDE updated to 4.5.5

• Many misc. improvements and bugfixes

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list available at:

• http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/8.2R/relnotes.html

• http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/8.2R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities please see:

• http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

Availability

FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures.

FreeBSD 8.2 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures (currently amd64 and i386) also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones such as amd64 and i386.

MD5 and SHA256 hashes for the release ISO images are included at the bottom of this message.

The purpose of the images provided as part of the release are as follows:

dvd1

This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, a collection of pre-built packages, and the documentation. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. This should be all you need if you can burn and use DVD-sized media.

disc1

This contains the base FreeBSD operating system and the documentation packages for CDROM-sized media. There are no other packages.

livefs

This contains support for booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode but does not support doing an install from the CD itself. It is meant to help rescue an existing system but could be used to do a network based install if necessary.

bootonly

This supports booting a machine using the CDROM drive but does not contain the support for installing FreeBSD from the CD itself. You would need to perform a network based install (e.g. from an FTP server) after booting from the CD.

memstick

This can be written to an USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. The documentation packages are provided but no other packages.

As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:

# dd if=8.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync 

Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.

FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE can also be purchased on CD-ROM or DVD from several vendors. One of the vendors that will be offering FreeBSD 8.2-based products is:

• FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/

Go there and Download...
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.2R/announce.html

Don

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