Slashdot Mirror
A Projection Display For Your Pocket
lub writes "The German Fraunhofer-Instituts für Siliziumtechnologie is developing a pocket beamer. It uses a laser beam and a rotating mirror to display the image. Another laser and a photo diode is used to verify whether the displayed image is shown correctly, so the electronics can adjust the image when the beamer moves. No colors yet; 320x240 in nice shades of red is what they have now, but higher resolutions and color might be implemented later. I want this in my BlackBerry!"
Finally a Nintendo Virtual Boy that I can share and experience with my friends!
Is that a beamer in your pocket......
oh yeah and firsties.
Loosely translated in English (I don't soeak German, but my dog does).
Beamer for the vest pocket
A projector in the pocket size is in range: In it a mobile micro mirror develops the picture line for line. In laboratory prototypes researchers could increase its frequency of oscillation and dissolution so far that diagrams and texts appear clearly readable.
Not much more largely than a piece wuerfelzucker could be the Beamer of the future. Built into Handys would always participate the mini projector - approximately for a PowerPoint presentation in the small circle or the fast view into an on-line journal. In strange cities it could facilitate orientation, by projecting simply a city plan to the next house wall. Still is this future music. Researchers of the institute for Fraunhofer for silicon technology ISIT in Itzehoe however already built a demonstrator for such a tiny equipment. It projects texts and diagrams with a dissolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Heart is a mobile mirror with a diameter of 1,5 millimeters, which can be manufactured as mass product on a chip. It directs a laser beam by speedy changing of its tilting angle, and develops so the picture pixel for pixels.
"the special at the mirror is its suspension", stresses Ulrich Hofmann. "by a special attachment at two torsion bars the mirror can be tilted around two axles. Thus it can divert a laser beam horizontal and vertically." After each deflection the feathers/springs withdraw the mirror so fast into its initial position that it can be tilted several thousands times per second. Suitably the high mobility the researchers accelerated electronics. It decides within the range of nanoseconds, how it must modulate the laser light, so that each pixel in the correct brightness appears. In order to avoid errors in the projection, a second laser serves as control. It radiates likewise on the mobile mirror; the reflected light meets however a photodiode, which locates, as the mirror tilted. "the mirror changes its position for example by vibrations inadvertently, notices control this", explains Hofmann. "electronics can react then flexibly to it and adapt the picture information accordingly." The system is thereby to a large extent insensitively in relation to disturbances from the outside.
Still the demonstrator fits into no mobile telephone. "for the test we had not made, say electronics smaller yet to a minimum" Hofmann. That is however one of the next goals of the researchers, who in addition the frequency of the mirror movement and so the dissolution would like to increase. Also in other place it hooks still: As tiny source of light with sufficient life span and leuchtstaerke there are so far only red laser diodes. Within this range the researchers wait now for developments of their colleagues. They however already prepared their system for the multi-color enterprise.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
Anyone else wondering how they got on and the white sheet of paper with a red laser in the image of this device in TFA? :)
That picture is obviously a photoshop job. Anyone got a real picture?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Google translation
I'm thinking that this could eventually replace laptop screens. Somewhere on your laptop you'd have one of these with 1600x1200 resolution and 32-bit colour and you could just project the screen onto any flat surface. It would probably bring down the weight a little bit, and maybe the power requirements of a laptop.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Is that a pocket beamer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Is that a projector in your pocket, or did I just wake up in a Star Wars movie?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Anything would be better than watching the stupid slideshow before movies. All the boring awful ads and quote from Cher and Queen Latifah....
I was thinking, hey, bring in my own little projector.
Jesus, am I talking right now?
This device should be surpressed for the good of all humanity. Think of the children!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Who's going to want to watch a display in my pocket?
http://mirrordot.org/stories/eb57b2ee6820e0666d616 ccb92825fc0/index.html
And already /.'ed
Despite conventional wisdom, I've discovered you can blame a guy for trying. It's called "attempted murder".
Colour projection is obviously going to rely on having either 3 base colour lasers (red, green, blue) or having a full-spectrum white.
In the world of lasers, Red is the cheapest right now with Green a close second.
However, when you get to Blue lasers, the price is significantly higher and then White lasers require you to sell your granny to afford them.
I'd like to be wrong but a system like this will probably stay monochrome for a while yet.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
At technology review they have an article about a similar device.m o1204.asp?p=1
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/12/de
as much as i want to see one in action, the next james bond film comes out next year - i'm sure we will see it being used in all kind of great situations there.
Business Voyeur
Here is the story (in german) and here is the image only (obvious mockup)
Move Sig. For great justice.
Just the other day I was looking up battery powered projectors, and found another company that is working on a small battery powered projector.
I'm imagining a PC that actually stays in your pocket, the projector on your belt with a (as yet magical) elastic display that pops up, and a collapsible keyboard that roles into the buckle like a tape measure.
How long until they claim that overhead projectors violate their patent on "arbitrary static image projection"?
I dunno, the tilty mirror thingy is eye-catching and the little laser's cute an' all but it's gonna take more than that to make my pocket project!
:)
(Throw in a booth babe or two though and maybe we can work something out...
Please mod this overbaked comment down. I was blinded by the possibilities of projected pocket porn...
Just gimme that white laser!
I want this in my BlackBerry!
I don't want this in your Blackberry, or anything else either.
I own a movie theatre and kids and teenagers with those damn laser pointers are enough of a distraction and cause for customer complaints already, thank you very much.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If they can manufacture this cheap, then it will revolutionize laser lightshows. Effectively, this is a closed-loop scanning galvanometer capable of 30K+ speeds -- and current scanners with similar capabilities cost thousands of dollars per axis. They're a lot bigger too.
If you replace the dinky red diode with a few hundred milliwatts of green, then guess what? Laser show in your pocket, at a price that any would-be laserist can afford. Not to mention all the applications in laser marking: the flexure arrangement means that the Fraunhofer galvo can achieve much longer lifetimes than standard ball-bearing arrangments. When you're scanning thousands of times per second, 24 hours a day... that's a good thing.
This
Just to make that clear: the second laser and photo diode is used to verify the position of the mirror.
Not to verify the projected image. That's what I understood when I read the summary first.
That would be a good idea: a control system (CCD or something) verifies the projected image, such that even on non-flat or not uniformly bright projection surfaces the image appears correct to the viewers.
If the basic principle of Mechanical Television and this new technology using lasers and mirrors instead of a circular plane with holes or a 'screw' mirror for Mechanical Television is combined, we may well see compact, bright and large-screen rear-projection or straight lensed projection screens.
/extremely/ high speed creating a scanning-line capable of scanning a large area in short enough time for a usable frame-rate and they oscillate the Laser via a light-blocking-transistor.
It sounds like they've just borrowed the funamental idea from an invention with basis closer-to the 19th century than the 21st century slapped it with a nice laser and added modern IC's, Brilliant!.
Id say that a mirror rotates at
A great and reliable idea, cheapest means to get a scanline too!!
However I don't understand German.
But Babelfish does (kind of):
A projector in the pocket size is in range: In it a mobile micro mirror develops the picture line for line. In laboratory prototypes researchers could increase its frequency of oscillation and dissolution so far that diagrams and texts appear clearly readable. Not much more largely than a piece wuerfelzucker could be the Beamer of the future. Built into Handys would always participate the mini projector - approximately for a PowerPoint presentation in the small circle or the fast view into an on-line journal. In strange cities it could facilitate orientation, by projecting simply a city plan to the next house wall. Still is this future music. Researchers of the institute for Fraunhofer for silicon technology ISIT in Itzehoe however already built a demonstrator for such a tiny equipment. It projects texts and diagrams with a dissolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Heart is a mobile mirror with a diameter of 1,5 millimeters, which can be manufactured as mass product on a chip. It directs a laser beam by speedy changing of its tilting angle, and develops so the picture pixel for pixels. "the special at the mirror is its suspension", stresses Ulrich Hofmann. "by a special attachment at two torsion bars the mirror can be tilted around two axles. Thus it can divert a laser beam horizontal and vertically." After each deflection the feathers/springs withdraw the mirror so fast into its initial position that it can be tilted several thousands times per second. Suitably the high mobility the researchers accelerated electronics. It decides within the range of nanoseconds, how it must modulate the laser light, so that each pixel in the correct brightness appears. In order to avoid errors in the projection, a second laser serves as control. It radiates likewise on the mobile mirror; the reflected light meets however a photodiode, which locates, as the mirror tilted. "the mirror changes its position for example by vibrations inadvertently, notices control this", explains Hofmann. "electronics can react then flexibly to it and adapt the picture information accordingly." The system is thereby to a large extent insensitively in relation to disturbances from the outside. Still the demonstrator fits into no mobile telephone. "for the test we had not made, say electronics smaller yet to a minimum" Hofmann. That is however one of the next goals of the researchers, who in addition the frequency of the mirror movement and so the dissolution would like to increase. Also in other place it hooks still: As tiny source of light with sufficient life span and leuchtstaerke there are so far only red laser diodes. Within this range the researchers wait now for developments of their colleagues. They however already prepared their system for the multi-color enterprise.
I mean, maybe it's signifigantly larger, but I want one of these: http://www.io2technology.com/dojo/178/v.jsp
The difference being partially that the heliodisplay works, now, and is much more Star War-sy
The two most important constraints on the size of portable devices these days (that I see), are the amount of information they are able to display, and the input method. This removes the display size issue, you can have a large display size in something really small. cool
"brxref
Does anyone remember that Sean Connery movie "Zardoz", where he is poking around someone's house and finds a green emerald ring, which when he activates it begins speaking and projects a computer display on the wall in front of him. I thought that was pretty cool.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
When I said full-spectrum white, I was hoping everyone (who knows lasers) would know the method.
White lasers either provide a cyclic frequency or are Red Green and Blue combined.
This is generally the reason for the astronomical prices of 'white' lasers.
The reason that they're referred to as 'white' is that on full gain/balance they appear white to the human eye (r,g,b at balanced levels)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
This reminds me of the matchbox-sized pojector the finnish company Upstream expects to put on market soon, with a first model commercially avaible in 2005.
Washington Times have a story on it too.
When do we get the 32bit color 1200x1600 version?
from pocket protectors to pocket projectors.
That is so stolen from starwars can you say copyright infrigement....
...what is the 'projected' cost of this? I mean my german is horrible, maybe someone else can just tell me?
I can't think of a better technology for for a monitor - or a TV. I can envision large projection TVs about the size, and weight, of a baseball. I'd love to hear details about the mirror; I expect there's an interesting combination of hardware and software in that gadget.
I've been chewing on this idea for more than a year, and I keep coming back to the difficulty of the pixel management, the shape of the mirror, the screen, and of course the generation of color. Yet I can clearly visualize opening up my laptop, positioning the projector, and never having to worry about a broken pixel again. So I'm cheering them on with this effort; I hope they apply it broadly. I want a tiny big-screen TV, and a 3 lb laptop with a 22 inch screen.
in this case a laser. Kinda sounds like a mechanical Television
It's a monochrome laser projector with a scanning mirror. There is one of these in every laser printer. Except this one scans two dimensions. Then again, its 320x200 instead of 5100 pixel line scanned by a 600dpi letter-size printer. So its not a big deal. Besides, wasn't there, back in 1998 or so, some 3D stereo display for some game console that used a red scanning laser? I think I've seen one in K-mart. I suppose, noone wanted a monochrome display then, and noone will want one now.
So the interesting thing about this gadget is not the amazing fact that someone made a laser projector, because there really is nothing amazing about it. The interesting thing is whether these guys would ever get 3 lasers (especially the blue one) cheap enough, while powerfull enough to scan a highres picture, as large as an LCD projector does, onto a wall. They'd need 3 powerfull lasers. As light sources go, lasers are about the least efficient, so the gizmo would drain a lot of power, and it will have to be large, with the heatsinks, fans, an all. So, the gadget would really end up being at least as large as an LCD projector, and some 10 times more expensive, mostly because of the blue laser. Why bother?
Is this really new technology? The Canesta keyboard already projects an image of a keyboard on any surface. This seems to be the same thing, except the Canesta keyboard exists in reality, and this site has a (well looks like anyway) photoshoped image. It could of course differ in resolution, etc.
Combine this keyboard with a similar virtual mouse and a pull-out screen to project on, and your laptop could be the size of a pocket dictionary.
Typing would be horrible. Good maybe for objects and CADD stuff
If they replace the fragile LCD screnns of laptops with tiny solid state projectors, they will be more rugged and maybe cheaper in the long run. One step further in the way to the disposable laptop that you can carry everywhere without worring about it being lost, broken, stolen.
Hey, maybe you wont even need a Best Buy extended warranty after all. How's that.
Nach jeder Auslenkung ziehen die Federn den Spiegel so schnell in seine Ausgangslage zurück, dass er sich mehrere tausend Mal pro Sekunde verkippen lässt.
It's been many years since I studied German, but that reads to me: the mirror moves "more than a thousand times per second". Translation: this thing vibrates at approximately 1 KHz. That's probably not only audible, but it probably would cause a noticable vibration in your hand, too.
I realize the vibration's amplitude is probably minor, but I can hear the buzz from a TV from 30 feet away... and I've known several other people who could do the same, so I'm not unique in that regard. The whir of my PC's fan and disk drives can be terribly annoying.
So, I think it's a great accomplishment, but I'd hold off buying one until the buzz dies down. ;^)
You're comparing apples and steaks, one is a pocket-size device that projects a flat image on a surface, the other is a desktop-size device that projects a hologram. The subject of this article is useful when you don't want to read things on the tiny screen of your cellphone/palmtop/etc. You don't want to carry around a heliodisplay all day long.
BTW, are those folks at IO2 the ultimate rednecks or what? They show off their prototype along with an american flag, a can of diet Coke, Altoids, and a pack of Marlboros... I half expected them to be projecting a picture of a nascar racer.
I remember looking at their website nearly a year ago. Why don't I see this tech at tradeshows and such? Hell, why don't I see it at my local science center...it looks so damn cool.
I can get myself a white laser *and* still have home made apple pie this Thanksgiving!
Can't wait til my old Deputy Head gets one of these. This is the teacher colloquially known as "Powerpoint Steve"... The Earth is doomed :(
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Except the Canesta projects a static image using the same type of holographic filters that come with the $2 laser pointer you can buy from your local ice cream truck. It is essentially a laser slide-show. Projecting a dynamic image is much, much harder.
I'm with you! Is there room in R2D2 firewall for the projector?
Think global, act loco
Well, doesnt seem like this obsoletes the portable projector, as this is not portable. However, it does seem pretty cool, and found the patent applications for it #20040001182 you can look it up on uspto.gov
We talked to them several times about buying a demo unit for a product we're making, and they never would give us a price for any of the components. They apparently don't exist.
Yeah, right.
Check out the picture in TFA, the dark parts of the photo are darker than the screen itself. How do they do that?
Talk about "Pocket Rocket"
His reference to "frigging laser beams" was intended to be a humourous reference to a rant the villian utters in the film Austin Powers: International man of mystery.
A Projection System with Radiometric Compensation for Screen Imperfections
It's not a laser, it's a Dark Sucker, although a very well collimated and controlled one.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
While porn is usually brought up as what drives the acceptance of new technology, games have to be a close second.
:-)
Aside from the issues of selling even low power lasers to kids (i.e., cheap laser pointers warning that they are not toys and shouldn't be sold to kids), wouldn't it be easy to use a cheap red laser diode to make a "game console" that would let you play Asteroids, Battle Zone, or Missle Command type games on your wall (or on the side of your house 20' high)?
Or, as others have joked about, just a simple scrolling message display like those spin around your head segmented LED displays so you can "tag" messages in public places?
You might have a hard time getting them carried at your local Radio Shack or Best Buy, but what do you bet that you can order them from international online stores soon?
Did I just blow my chances at a multi-million dollar patent again?
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness