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Matchbox-sized Laser Projector
soupisgoodfood writes "Light Blue Optics Ltd. have developed a laser-based projector called the PVPro. It's small enough to fit into a cellphone or PDA.
Some specs: Supports resolutions up to 2048x1280; No moving parts; Infinite focus; Green monochrome, with a colour version expected late 2006; Max consumption of 1.4W with an average of <350mW.
Looks a like a good solution to the increasing problem of smaller devices trying to display more information."
Price?
Q: Now, Mr. Bond. For your mission, we have this keychain-sized laser projector that serves as a stun grenade when the red button is held.
M: Hey, that sounds cool. Why don't you take out the explosive and send one over to my office? Pip pip, cheerio.
Uh huh. And why would this stop you from also having a more discrete display?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Now we have the mini projector, I want a mini red stapler.
and you know what, when it arrives - its mine not yours.
liqbase
Yet another way I'm sure I will come to hate cellphones...
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
Once these come out in color, imagine having one of these babies inside your laptop. You can then set your laptop on any work surface 2-10' from a wall and have a big screen monitor. If we want to get fancy even we can slap some gyros and accelerometers into the computer and you can have the computer on your lap, and provided you don't wiggle too much ( no pr0n ) you could probably work fairly well from a sofa as well, the software would adjust the image and angle of the projector using servos, etc. Very cool.
Well, that's easy for the green and red part, the blue laser is other business.. they don't come cheap nor small.
\u262D = \u5350
Having a projector that size would make it so much easier to view all your converted, downloaded, mega-shrinked videos on the back of the student in front of you.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems in Dresden, Germany actually had a similar Projector one year ago.
It works at 640x480 in Full Color (3*8 bit).
It's even smaller at the size of "2 sugar cubes".
See here for yourself
If they make a monochrome projector, I'd at least expect a light blue one!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Has anyone seen a picture of the projector in use?
Definetly has me interested, Especially a color model. If they can replace all of our LCD based projectors with a laser one thats absoletly quiet and virtually maintience free for not much more than an current LCD/DLP projector, then they definetly got my attention.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Ok, so there's pictures of it sitting next to a penny, and in the hands of some dude. How about a picture of it projecting something?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I hate getting ripped off by projector manufacturers who charge me in the hundreds of dollars for projector bulbs that (a) cost a fraction to make and (b) burn out in much less time than advertised. Sure, this built-in to a cell phone could be fun/useful, however my immediate need is a projector for my laptop that is small, robust, doesn't consume *very* expensive bulbs, full color and high resolution. This device may not be there just yet -- but it appears to be within spitting distance. If this company can't get there -- someone else will. All this I applaud.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
From the PDF:
Typical Diagonal Image & Brightness: 7" @ 800 cd/m^2 - 15" @ 200cd/m^2 (50% max average pixel amplitude)
What good is all that resolution when you can't get the viewing area above 15" without going to a dark room?
Not that it's not a brilliant (hah!) achievement, anyway. Bring on the fanless projectors!
I have a 48" projection TV and a 21" CRT monitor, running both at the same time sucks massive amounts of power. Replacing them both with a laser projection system that takes less then a watt and a half to run would be fine by me!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Hey! I remember that. The computer lab's Apple IIes had those (though admittedly, not 2048x1280). I wonder if you can play Oregon trail or lemonade stand on this thing...
until someone gets their eye put out by Junior's laser-based micro projector.
No moving parts is neat - the galvanometers they use for laser-light shows are a colossal PITA.
I'm expecting to see game consoles that don't need a TV anymore - would be super-portable.
Now, the question is when we can couple this with pupil-tracking to draw the images directly onto the retina. I want my metaverse.
Evil!
Now we can strap lasers to guppies heads as well....
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Why would use ColdFusion when you can use Python?
Is this the sort of thing that could be used in HUD's in cars? Or what about high-resolution wearable displays? It's probalby now just a matter of time before you see people walking around with their video ipods completely oblivious to everything going on around them (as if they're not now) as they watch porn on the subway while going to/from work.
Moreover, years have gone by already since Schneider/Jenoptik demonstrated their "laser display technology" (albeit "diode-pumped solid-state", i.e. not quite as tiny...) and announced to have "developed the heart of this technology, the Red-Green-Blue laser (RGB laser), ready for mass production." [sic!]
Some news stories don't need them, but anytime a press release comes out about some new visual technology (eInk, laser projectors, etc), I get annoyed that they can't show the technology being demonstrated. Sounds more like vaporware and a company trying to get investors excited to dump millions into them before finding out the technology isn't feasible and walk away with those millions leaving the company bankrupt.
Rant aside, if this technology DOES exist, it is very cool. Integrating a projector into mobile devices or notebooks is great, but considering the resolution, it would a great Home Theater projector as well. Laser light remains strong and bright over long distances, so in theory, you should be able to get big screens in the home without worrying about dimming the image.
The only thing I worry about is that while having a high resolution, laser is such a highly focused light that will these "pixels" be too separated to offer a decent image? Even at 2000+ points across, if those points are spread out too far apart, then you won't get a decent projected image. Chances are, mobile applications where you can shine the image a few inches or feet away is probably all that laser projectors are good for. Throwing the image across 20 feet, while still bright, might separate the pixels too much and make for a poor image.
So far, it looks like this company is just looking for investors, and as such, I would consider this vaporware. They are definitely looking to bank off the success of iPod video devices as well as the current fad of displaying television on Cell phones.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
They also have a virtual keyboard for sale. Imagine setting your cell phone on a table, pushing a button, and getting an instant monitor and keyboard. No one will need PCs for surfing the web and common functionality. Give it ten years or so to become widespread.
Infinite focus to me sounds like a collimator. Does this mean that you need another lens somewhere to form the image?
If this device uses a laser to project its image, it makes me concerned about the dazzle or sparkle you see when looking at a truly monochromatic, coherent point of light. Shine a laser pointer at the wall, and it looks like the dot sparkles. I believe this is a function of the coherency of the light plus the way our eyes perceive the light.
I have a hard time imagining watching an entire wall full of sparkle effect across the entire picture. Do they somehow make the light non-coherent, so your eye doesn't have this problem?
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
So, then, do they have to use such high-priced light sources? The lamps for old-school overhead projectors or slide projectors are well under $50.
Is there some inherent requirement in projecting a digital image that requires so much more lamp, versus projecting a film/transparency/analog source?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I can find little information on the companies website. They claim that it has "no moving parts", and that it uses "Computer Generated Holograms" and that it uses some kind of micropixel display.
They say that because they can focus the laser so well, the computer generated hologram can be very small.
They say that the system works by "steering light" instead of blocking it (an LCD array blocks light to modulate it).
Anyway, none of this tells me very much. Are they using a piezoelectric mirror to scan a laser across a hologram, that bends the light to scan the image? Are they using a 1D mirror or LED array and then scanning that with a piezoelectric mirror/hologram? I assume that a piezoelectric mirror moves so little and so robustly that it's not considered a "moving part".
What is the particular brand of magic that these people are using?
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Three Hundred Fifty Milliwatts is 0.35 of one Watt. Most lasers are under 50% efficient. The deflection and modulation and optics are unlikely to be more than 50% efficient.
So imagine spreading 0.090 watts of light over a screen-sized area. Pretty dang dim! Like you'll need dark adapted eyes to even see the picture.
Still a neat device, but you're not going to run your own Drive-in movie theater with it.
It's even smaller at the size of "2 sugar cubes".
Damned europeans and their metric units. Hrumph.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Use this to project a fake doorway onto walls and watch your victims slam into walls, ala Bugs Bunny.
Bugs Bunny cartoons do not feature advanced technology whereas Roadrunner cartoons do. So what really would happen is that you would project a fake doorway onto the wall, your intended victim would walk up to the wall, open the door, walk through the doorway and close the door behind. Astounded, you'd run to the door only to slam into the brick wall, a la Wile E. Coyote.
blog
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC= 895872
250 lux
1 lbs.
SVGA
Introducing a portable projector so small, it can fit in the palm of your hand. Weighing about a single pound, this portable battery operated DLP (TM) projector supports native 800x600 SVGA resolution, and is powered by a sequential LED light source with support for RCA video, S-video and VGA inputs.
- Unbeatable convenience through extreme portability in both size and weight
- Long life-lamp, with quick-on, quick-off, no warm up period
- A projector at practically the cost of less than two regular projector lamp
- Can be battery operated
Included Accessories:
Protective slip cover.
You didn't read the spec sheet. The brightness at 15" is 200 candela - aproximately the brightness of a LCD screen. The brightness at 7" - half the distance - is 880 candela. Now do a curvefit and tell me how bright it is going to be at a comfortable viewing distance - 120"++ for a home theater (~50 candela). (answer: not very.)
Let's do the math. The screen is 15" diagonal (NOT 15" viewing distance). At an aspect ratio of 16:9 that's a screen that's about 13"x7" (I'm using exact values in the calculations). So, calculating area and switching to sane units, that's a display area of 0.062 m^2. If this thing does 200 cd/m^2 at that distance then it's putting out a total of 12.4 cd, at a power consumption of between 0.35W and 1.4W.
Now, let's say we want a 64" flat panel display. At 16:9 that would be about 55"x31", or an area of 1.13 m^2. Our little projector will only do about 11 cd/m^2 on that. Not good.
BUT... if the technology can be scaled to higher powers:
to get back to our 200 cd/m^2 for the big screen experience we need about 18 times more power. That is, between 6.4W and 25W, assuming no extra losses when scaling up.
Just for fun, I checked out home theatre projectors. I found one at 750 lumens, another at 1200. Let's say 1000. That's 25 candela. SO, to get equal performance to the standard projector we need to put out twice what we are. We might expect a power drain of 700 mW - 2.8 W. Not bad!
Surely they can make this thing put out twice as much light as it does... in fact, we might expect the full colour version to put out three times as much light, which (unless I made a mistake) should make it brighter than most home theatre projectors. Presumably they can do that in something that's not much bigger than, say, a cell phone. Provided this thing works, it should be pretty cool.