Slashdot Mirror
Matchbox Sized Color Projectors?
Justin Nolan sent in a very brief link about
ultra small projectors which says
"Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year. Upstream's patented technology, called Photon Vacuum, maximizes the amount of photons sent to the target from the light source in a minimum space and allows the creation of devices free of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy. Photon Vacuum enables the smallest projector designs in the world, ultimately to a size of matchbox. The company says is going to push the power consumption of the whole device ultimately to below 4 watts while still gaining a travel-TV sized color projection" You can also read Upstream's website for almost as little information.
Are they going to be 2k US+ like conventional projectors? Will they force the price of conventional projectors down?
Does this mean that projectors will get smaller, cheaper and more high quality?
The holy grail!
Chris
Site says it's down for "software upgrade".
Anyone got a mirror?
They made the projectors to fit inside of a Matchbox car!!!
Now, if lots of these min-projectors could be put together in a matrix, will this mean that, finally, big screen TVs can be produced more cheaply. (If one mini-projector does dead, just swap it out).
Thats the spirit. Every electric and electronic appliance should go for that goal. While the effort to finally get a cheap, clean and reliable source of energy is good, we must for once pay attention to nature and reduce power consuption to a minimum, that would buy us some time or being able to rely in smaller sources of energy like wind or solar pannels. Size does matter!!,
Although I dont know what im going to do whith such a tiny proyector, maybe i'll put it in my back pockent and sit on it afterwards and break it. Or have it stuck in a child's ear.
"The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
Sounds like these guys will be up for the 2004 Wired Vaporware awards.
Shows how much Slashdot checks a post before it hits the front page ...
Upstream's unique and revolutionary technology, called Photon Vacuum, practically maximizes the amount of photons sent to the target from the light source in a minimum space. This is not an easy trick since the etendue law of light in physics requires more space for better efficiency. Our special technology enables us to get rid of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy. The current table projectors extract typically only a few watts of light power out of 200W of input power.
Photon Vacuum enables the smallest projector designs in the world, ultimately to a size of matchbox. It is possible to push the power consumption of the whole device ultimately to below 4 watts while still gaining a travel-TV sized color projection. There are a myriad of possible applications for this technology.
Obviously this would hinge on cost, but I seems to me that this would make it much more practical to integrate projected images through a living or work space. A lot of futuristic concepts include projectors in their design, but these units are always large and ugly. Having projectors conveniently displaying information and entertainment (TV, artwork, notifications, etc.) on surfaces throughout the house would be "really neat"
SPAM
I am sure something useful will come, eventually, but don't hold your breath waiting for anything cool to buy any time soon.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
There's nothing on that site to indicate that they're anything other than vapourware.
It doesn't follow that it's impossible - on the contrary, I think this is a technology we'll be seeing very soon - I just doubt that it will be from this company.
So why do I think we'll be seeing it soon ? Simple, grasshopper. Lasers. It's easy enough to build a poor quality monochrome vector display out of a laser diode and a couple of mirrors on motors. That's expensive and clunky.
A laser diode and a couple of piezo-transducer-mounted mirrors would be a slightly more elegant mechanism, and if you can build a vector display with this, you ought just as easily to be able to build a raster display.
So all we're missing is the cheap green laser diode and the cheap blue laser diode to complement the existing cheap red laser diode.
Now, you CAN buy a green laser pointer that's only moderately painfully expensive - and now that there's an imminent demand for blue laser diodes for high density DVD players I'm hoping their cost will plummet.
I don't have the skills to build this, but I'm hoping someone will get onto it soon.
D.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
with a pocket size projector and DVD players becoming increasingly smaller. I could project things anywhere. Now I just need a good set of small battery powered speakers (with a sub of course)
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Dear PDA LIVE Users, the server is currently down for Software Upgrading. We will be back with you in a while. Kindly bear with us.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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*DrugCheese rants*
Little info and terms like "Photon Vacuum" make this thing sound like the next high end graphics card from the bitboys... If they had a usable product they would give you at least some information - especially since the design is according to them patent protected...
The projector:
l
http://www.upstream.fi/index.html
The Technology
http://www.upstream.fi/technology.htm
Upstream's unique and revolutionary technology, called Photon Vacuum, practically maximizes the amount of photons sent to the target from the light source in a minimum space. This is not an easy trick since the etendue law of light in physics requires more space for better efficiency. Our special technology enables us to get rid of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy. The current table projectors extract typically only a few watts of light power out of 200W of input power.
Photon Vacuum enables the smallest projector designs in the world, ultimately to a size of matchbox. It is possible to push the power consumption of the whole device ultimately to below 4 watts while still gaining a travel-TV sized color projection. There are a myriad of possible applications for this technology.
First in the world, Upstream Engineering introduces a revolutionary optical technology that will enable video projection from matchbox-sized device running on batteries.
Our expertise covers all the necessary areas from micro-optics to low-power digital electronics. We design custom projectors based on our unique technology.
For people who are often going to meetings, this makes it pretty quick to set up, could go off your laptops power source so no need looking for an outlet, no need to adjust it, nice and fast. If it is priced correctly, I would even buy it just to have since, you never know when a gadget like this will come in handy. Ok okay, yes I was the one to buy the USB laptop lamp, and no I don't use it :(
Pretty soon, when you fly on an airplane, every time someone leans back their seat you'll hear the person behind them whine "hey! you're keystoning my screen, man!"
Put one of these in a cameraphone. You'll soon have people giving slideshows of the pictures they took on vacation straight from the phone. oy.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Matchbox Sized? how much mili-volkswagon-beetles are that?
Their website doesn't even feature a single photo, prototype, or past products. I'm surprised this article was even approved. It certainly looks like yet another one of those companies which try to persuade people to buy shares, counting on a 'revolutionary' product which the company is unlikely to ever succeed in producing.
Their website is online now - still not very much information.
Are they sure they didn't mean photon vapor? I hear they are working on fusion as well...
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
First of all, I'm guessing PDALive is running a matchbook size webserver and it started to flame so they took it down.
This product (if it's not vapor) looks like it could be a great advance in this technology. I use a "regular" size projector daily and it's a pain in the butt to move the whole setup when we go on the road.
The other issue is price; a decent LCD project costs $2K. If they could get the price down to under $500, that would be big. As it is, we have to move projectors quite often due to the cost of buying new ones.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
oh boy. now when your rfid chip is read, the ads on the walls can change to entice you as you walk by only to change for the next person's "sale match" item.
yes, this will be a great tool for on-the-go presenters, but damn, i can hear the smiles on the marketing dept's collective face.
A brief google of "photon vacuum" comes up with a series of papers in the realm of quantum physics http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0954-3899/29/1/311.
I need to finish reading what papers I can find regarding this concept, but so far it looks like something still in the arena of pure science. One article also refers to carbon nano tubes, so if this isn't vapor ware it will be expensive.
But I have seen it - at least the prototype in a Finnish magazine (Just can't remember which one..)
It had a very small controlling electronics part and the actual projector part was itself very small compared to a matchbox next to it. In that picture it had no casing at all.
For that size, they were able to project up to 1024x768 resolution. For larger sizes, projector had to be bigger.
I try to find some network references if there are any..
take it on a plane that still uses 'large screen at the front' and show your own movies
following a bus at night- project it on the rear of the bus, drive safely and watch a movie/tv (dear, your are getting to close to the screen)
put one on the rear of your motorcycle- pointed at your jacket, for various phrases to roll through-- should realy confuse someone somewhere..
inverted peeping tom- sneak around vidding porn into peoples houses-think what happened when laser pointers first came out- then multiply X the number of porn movies ever made
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Hey, I have one of those too! And no, it isn't practical for anything. I do keep it in my pack, though, and whip it out as a coolness factor at LAN parties. The newbies are scared shitless of me for the fifteen minutes of a WC3 game. I also have a Microsoft Strategic Commander that serves the same function; I plug it up too if I want 'em to be scared for a good half hour. The truth, of course, is that I suck at WC3, but I'm pretty good at the mind game.
was about discovery and making great things. But apparently it's about patenting the best ideas.
Why can't science be for the good of all not just for the ruling class? I hate it when people come up with good ideas then think they have to patent them.
What would we be allowed to know about physics if Einstein patented his ideas? We'd have to pay to use E=mc^2.
Science is about profit not discovering great things and sharing them with the world.
The definition of vaporware is not that things indicate that they could not exist but that there is not evidence that it does exist. I only visited a few pages because it was under a slashdotting, but I did not see anything suggest the means to this mechanism. So, does it mean it is impossible? Certainly not, just as it is possible for Ashcroft to spontaneously start break dancing; however, they have to "prove" they are not vaporware.
Throw this in with the 1 terabyte removable drive promised a year ago and the Mr. Bubble Fusion desktop units--when it becomes available for purchase then figure out how it impacts your life.
Is it just me or are people just too damned concerned about things that "could be" than "are?"
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
they come in portable versions, with hard cases.
at 500$- no one would buy large screen tv's ever again...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Im curious how this 'photon vacuum' thing works.. perhaps they have a patent out, or some actual information ( besides the marketing fluff on their pages )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As if theft of projectors isn't bad enough already!
2^5
Finally I'll be able to play Quake on big screen!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Anyone ever see the Great Space Coaster? A kids show back in the late 70's / early 80's. I remember thinking that someday we'll have projectors that small that take a match-sized video 'capsule' and played a movie. It seems only days away now...
Optics.org had an article
this summer about a pair of other pocket projector projects. These includes using an array of lasers to limit scanning or a single higher powered light-source. If 'pocket' is the only thing that matters you might also look into a development of normal bar-code scanners.
Someone jumped the gun here.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Do you actually believe that you can project a reasonable image with _4 watts_ of power? You need energy to create photons. Even with zero heat loss, you can't get a luminous image out of 4 watts. This is vaporware at best.
first time I've actually laughed out loud while reading slashdot!
I totally want to sneak around projecting porn into people's living rooms. what a great social experiment...
Image how small the remote control will be ...
They talk about a "photon vacuum" but all is see is an information vacuum and a product vacuum. There is no there there.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Yes, we all trust Bitboys very much...
"The size of the projection will be initially around the size of standard travel televisions."
Does anyone have a figure for the amount of light needed per square foot for good visibility on a screen with normal meeting room lighting? Assume solid state light source efficiency levels.
There are two interesting parts to their claims. One is reduction in size, the other is reduction in power requirements. The statement above from their website leads me to believe they're really just reducing the size of the device - the 4W figure is spread over just a few square inches. When they need to cover several square feet the power consumption will increase proportionally, and so will the size of the device to allow for adequate cooling.
Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors...
Willing to provide???
Infinium is willing to provide Hard OCP a lawsuit. Television networks are willing to provide good entertainment. The government is willing to provide conclusive evidence of foreign WMD programs.
A lot of people are willing to provide things -doesnt mean that it will happen.
I think someone should be willing to provide Upstream an alternative to Babelfish.
Isn't this a round-about way of saying "Imagine a Beowulf cluster..."?
;)
Admit it, you thought about skipping down Troll Lane, but lost your nerve
Whether this company is BSing or not, were still getting to the point where technology is getting smaller and smaller, Look how far computers have come along, even compared to 10 years ago, most of the stuff we have was just someones pipe dream, and compared to 30years ago, most of it was science fiction at best. The only things holding us back realisticly is major coprerations censoring the information that is available to the masses, technological advances that would revolutionalise industries and hence make them loose profits. Where would we be today if during the industrial revolution the protestors had won? We would still be in the dark ages, no electricity, no machines, no technology.
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
Don't forget that while the projector won't be 100% efficient, neither is a light bulb.
It is possible to push the power consumption of the whole device ultimately to below 4 watts while still gaining a travel-TV sized color projection.
Well, a 15-inch LCD panel consumes about 30W, all in. I don't know how big a travel-TV is, but less say it's 7.5inches. Assuming power is proportional to area, then an LCD 7.5-inch travel TV would consume 7.5W. I assume some of that power is absorbed in the colour filters, and some more is lost in the polarizer, and some is used by the TFT itself. So it doesn't seem impossible to me to have a 7.5inch display that consumes 4W.
Of course this could still be vaporware, but I don't think the 4W number is a dead giveaway.
Is it just me, or does this remind anyone of the advertising from Minority Report? You know - "Welcome back to the Gap, Mr. blah!"
Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year.
Yeah, most companies would keep this kind of tech to themselves, to impress their friends!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is not an easy trick since the etendue law of light in physics requires more space for better efficiency. Our special technology enables us to get rid of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy.
I hope they are able to do what they claim, but I'm always wary of companies that claim to have overcome the laws of physics.
Maybe I'm just bitter after getting burned on that anti-gravity skateboard deal.
What were you expecting?
Try an uncooled 4-watt bulb squeezed into half a cubic inch of space on your lap. Goodbye, sperm!
So... you couldn't use a regular projector?
Shows how much Slashdot checks a post before it hits the front page ...
Yeah, but if they checked stories and only published the real ones, we'd only see half a dozen per day or one every 4 hours on average. That goes against their economic self-interest of driving up ad-views by conditioning the SlashDot lemmings to refresh the home page every minute.
So if even stupid stories generate ad-views... why should they stop?
Traditional PDAs are about to make a real change, with both Input *AND* output projected.
You'll place your PDA on a table and project the screen against a wall, or stretched vertically, onto the table ahead of it, while it simultaneously projects the keyboard onto the table.
I also anticipate the keyboard projector will ultimately detect finger movements in a separate area, and act as a mouse also.
How freaking cool will this technology be? VERY - but the bottleneck is *STILL* going to be battery power - so - come on you Fuel-cell freaks: crack that problem!!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
get smaller, cheaper and more high quality?
Pick 2. you can't have all three.
You can have just about anything you want for any price you want--you just have to be willing to wait until somebody comes up with it.
Yes! I can finally build a holo-projector to stick into the head of the full size R2D2 I am building at home!
This truely is news for nerds and it really matters!
Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year.
Now thats either really poorly translated from Japanese or something, or that's a really ego-centric business.. Willing? WILLING? I'm paying you money, you better be willing.
Merge this technology with some other bleeding edge 3d/holographic technologies and some concepts that used to only exist in scifi suddenly have some real-world possibility.
Palmtop holographic photos and/or projections could seem likely in the next few years?
if these sell for computers, and at a good retail price, viewsonic's in deep shit, most of their projectors are fscking between $1500 and $3000
this would be great to see in use for computers, then people with laptops need to show a quick presentation, they can plug one in quick and show it oog, or laptops with these built in.
wouldnt be too shabby.
They could be doing laser scanning, but I doubt it. I bet they're using LEDs as the light source. Possibly micro arrays for the actual image, but most likely still sticking with a small LED array that has the three colors, a special lensing system that focuses them through a monochrome LCD (cheap non-high temperature transmissive) and then another lens which then produces the output.
This would provide several advantages. First, it would be fairly efficient since 4W of LED power is still fairly efficient (though still 'hot' and not close at all to the ideal 100%). The cheap LCD display due to the lower heat. Small size, especially if high index refrective lenses are used.
Disadvantages are many. Traditional projectors use a bulb which, for all intents and purposes can be modelled as a point light source. Optics are easy, comparatively. For a LED array the optics would be...non trivial. I suppose they could be using single LEDs but even then the leds are seperated, which still makes the job difficult. Another is that the smaller the package, the smaller the optics. The smaller the optics the worse the image. There's a reason you'll never get 4 meter telescope pictures out of a 10cm telescope. The resolving power of the lenses is limited by their size. The LED element will be huge compared to the lens size, and the picture is simply going to be poor.
It'll happen, through this speculative idea or through another, but real multimedia projectors for a given size projection have to be at least as large as the lens has to be for the quality you want. The only thing they might be able to make gains on without ruining the quality are lamp efficiency, lower heat output (these are coupled), and the design of the lens systems currently needed to throw a decent image across a room.
-Adam
That's basically what the pen computer mentioned a week or so ago was on about - another example of a device looking at integrating a small-scale projector (Picture of pen computer in use). The keyboard was from canesta and the display was an LED projector. The article was a bit hazy on whether their display model contained a working version or not, but as the prototype did cost around $30,000, it might be a few weeks before it gets particularly cheap.
with something that small the cable is going to outweigh the projector. you'd better be very careful how you set it up or your $5K projector could just go whizzing off the table if you've got some cable overhang.
or maybe there's going to be a nice big rubber sucker on the bottom?
In the Boorman film ZARDOZ (1974), the futuristic denizens of that film use mini-projectors like these in their rings for interfaces. You can also see Charlotte Rampling and Sean connery in various states of undress.
-- Real Stupidity is the Artificial Intelligence of the 21st century
Here's a possible solution. Use a an ultra-small LCD such as the kopin cyberdisplay (www.kopin.com), which is a transmissive display, and combine it with some optics and a luxeon 5watt LED. Voila, you have a VERY small projector, which is battery operable and cheap. I looked into it, and have discovered that it is feasible, if only I could find a cheaper source of microdisplays! Kopin caters to OEMS, and all other manufacturers of similar LCD's do as well. Samples and development boards are rediculously expensive. Any advice?
It is definitely not a new idea...
e dsDescribe sPocketProjector.htm
s /MD2002 .pdf
There are several prototypes.
for example:
http://www.insightmedia.info/news/LumiL
PDF here:
http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/techpaperspre
Globaldisplay even markets a mini-projector, although it does not use an LED.
(http://www.globaldisplay.com.hk)
Siemens already have this technology, working as a prototype... from 2001!? Upstream is a laggard!
/ ar tikel03/
http://w4.siemens.de/FuI/en/archiv/pof/heft1_02
The miniature format is also of great interest in the field of projection technology. Siemens has developed a matchbox-sized daylight projector that can be plugged into a cell phone with a corresponding interface. The projector can be used for presentations in small meetings or for surfing the Internet. This projection cell phone was recently presented at the CeBIT 2002 computer show in Hannover, Germany. An LED array in the module lights up a microdisplay through a beam splitter. The light is modulated with the image information by the display, then exits through the projection lenses. Full-color pictures can be generated by rapidly illuminating the monochrome display with the red, blue and green LED colors in sequence. "This mini-projector can project onto any surface--even a piece of paper or the back of an airplane seat," says Marco Werner from Siemens Information and Communication Mobile. The projector currently generates 1.1 lm, enough to illuminate a postcard-sized surface. "But the prototype still offers enormous room for improvement," says Werner enthusiastically. With optimized design and equipped with more intense light-emitting diodes, it should be possible to improve the luminous efficiency by a factor of ten over the next two years.
Of course, lasers have also been considered as a light source. Their use would make it possible to eliminate the focusing optics and to project onto curved surfaces. However, suitable miniature laser diodes are currently available only in red. The efficiency level of the blue and green solid-state lasers now on the market is still too low. In the distant future, Werner can also imagine 3D laser projectors that have no need of fixed projection screens. In such a situation, the image would then be created on a boundary surface like a patch of air whose density has been altered using ultrasound.
Wouldn't that be cool? Just stick it in your PCMCIA slot, then tilt the laptop so it points at the screen.
Unknown host pong.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=photon+vacuum&FIELD1=&co1=AN D&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=ptxt
Video iPod?
I know I'm horribly ignorant about all of these things, but why not use HID bulbs for projectors? Everyone is so concerned about light output, heat, bulb life, etc. It seems like HID would be better on all of those counts.
The local newspaper Kaleva here in Oulu Finland ran a story about them and their prototype:
Kaleva's story
Bigger picture
The caption of the picture says: Prototype and a matchbox. World's smallest videoprojector consists of a lightning machine, which captures light more efficiently. There is also text about the future screen resolutions and the cost of the thing, 700? at first and later 250?.
jari / dj ken-guru
Think bigger: How about the outside wall of the neighbours house?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.