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DIY Projector Plans Released
vroom writes "Lumenlab, a rapidly-growing website dedicated to the art of building LCD projectors, has just released its guide on how to build your own projector. The guide used to sell for $19.99, along with entrance to the "Premium Forums," where like-minded DIYers work together to constantly push this obsession forward. Not sure if building your own LCD projector is for you? Not a problem anymore. Just download the official torrent file of the guide and you're good to go. If you want to roam with the others in the Premium Forums, however, you'll still need to buy a membership."
Further investigation into the forums (which I originally assumed were 100% locked to guests, which proved not to be correct) led to this:
c =2898&st=40
http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopi
So it does indeed look legit. Surprised they don't have something a little more visible regarding the announcement, though.
My roommate and I actually are going with this route (although we are poor college kids, so obtaining the parts is a slow process). We know a few people on campus that have used this method as well. Coming from an engineering school something like this guide isnt much help to me, but access to those forums have been invaluable, there's just the little things that you just dont quite think of when you're building your projector that other people have done (i.e. keystoning and different methods of implementing it), and plus it's nice to have a big community to help you along with something like this. Stripping down a LCD may seem intimidating, but with some tips from the community, it's something that can be easily achieved.
/me puts on my flame suit for forking over the $20 some-odd bucks and prepares for a raping.
Now...
Hardly "Just released" ! My personal copy of the lumenlab guide
says "Copyright lumenlab.com 2003-2004".
BTW It is a good guide, but the same information can be collected elsewhere.
http://izzotek.com/index.php?lang=en
http://www.diyprojectorcompany.com/
http://www.diybeamer.ch/portal/index.php (German, Ahh es macht so gut..)
http://www.gadaffy.ch.vu/
http://www.gwidijanto.fcpages.com/index.htm
Yet buying the guide allows access to the forums, which by itself is worth the price.
It's a lot of work, there is some risk involved, and there are areas that don't come close to a commercial projector. Commercial projectors can pump out a lot more light than a diy pj... but the catch is that their bulbs are rated for only a few thousand hours and cost many hundreds of dollars to replace. Spending half the cost of your projector every year or so to replace the bulb, doesn't sound like much fun to me. Or you could keep it in it's box and only use it once a year to conserve the bulb... but then you're not getting your money's worth then either.
:)
:D
DIY pj's use metal halide HID lamps that last for upwards of *twenty thousand hours* and cost anywhere between $50 and $150 each. Have the thing on all day every day if you want
And there's no understating the worth of boggling the minds of your friends and family when you tell them you made it yourself
The guide is littered with "more details at our premium forums", "detailed description of how to do it on the forums", "which can be obtained in our store" etc. The guide is just a top of an iceberg. The previous "pay for the guide, get access to the forum" seemed more honest than current "get guide free, pay to access the forums so the guide is of any actual use to you".
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The three things you want in an ideal projection lamp are
a) very high light output
b) very short arc length
c) very even colour spectrum
The reason b) is important is because the projection optics rely on having a point-light source. Light that's generated only a few mm off the focal point of the first lens doesn't follow the correct path through the optics and gets wasted (or pollutes the light that is going the right way, causing a blurry, washed out image.) Add a) and b) and you get a lot of heat in a very, very small space. Manufacturing a bulb that can do a and b and doesn't explode as soon as it's lit is hard. Add c and things are even harder.
I'm sure bulb manufacturers make a reasonable profit off their bulbs, but they aren't deliberately limiting the lifespan of these bulbs for the hell of it - it's just you only get two out of "cheap", "good" and "long-lived".
Just think, if anyone could squeeze 800x600 onto a 35mm LCD then they could produce 12000x9000
It's not how it works. That's why you don't see wall-sized 12000x9000 screens being just a seamless 10x10 matrix of 1200x900 screens, same pixel size, bigger image size. You can make bigger screens by making bigger pixels, and opposite, tiny screens with tiny pixels, like in the expensive "real" projectors. The problem is the number of interconnections, data lines for each pixel. You can squeeze in only as many while keeping the latencies at reasonable level, and the physical size has little (even if some) to do with it.
There are tiny XGA displays that could nicely go straight for such a projector, expensive like the hell, but they exist. The problem here is heat, they are way too heat-sensitive to survive it.
I was thinking more along the lines: Take it apart, change the distances between lenses, possibly add two fresnels or something like this, use normal LCD screen.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Once you've gotten your spiffy projector built, you might as well attach it properly to the ceiling. I didn't build my own projector, but I did build my own projector mount. I have pictures and more details available. I've built the mount for a couple of different types of projectors, but the design can easily work for just about any projector. Total cost ended up being 2 or 3 bucks for the hardware. I had a couple of old pieces of wood lying around, so I didn't have to buy that.
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
I know that many of you will belive this to be a scam just as I did when me and a friend found it about 2 years ago. I plunked down the 20 bux at the time and then started reading the protected forums looking at the different ideas. After a month or so of gathering a list of things that I should get( basically what was most popular with many of the other builders) I decided that I would give it a shot and see if I could actually make it work. The build process was not very hard at all. I took my time building and measuring everything in about 2 weeks. When I first turned the projector on, I was waiting for it to not work and me to look like a fool to my wife. Much to her and my surprise the first projected images of Shrek where absolutley jaw dropping. Now, when ever we have a party or gathering at the house, everyone always wants to check out the gaming/movie projector as I sit there with a smug look on my face saying "Yea I built that for under 500 bux" Anyhow, here is a link to my finished working projector that has been running for over 1.5 years and is still great. http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic =1576
If you truely want a home theater, do not just blow this off as a scam. Putting a TV in a cardboard box to get a 120" picture that is crystal clear and high definition is a scam. This is true science. And you will be very pleased with what you come up with after you are finished with your DIY projector.