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World's Smallest Projector
SkinnyGuy writes "Mixed into all of PCMag's CES preview coverage is an interesting story about a projector that's no bigger than an iPod. An early version showed up at last year's CES, but some of the guts weren't inside the small body. Now they are. It uses lasers to project the image. Really fascinating, futuristic stuff."
Don't let the, sharks get a hold, of this one...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Frickin' lasers! Now all we need is some sharks.
Heh, I can only imagine how fun it would be to mess around with in a high school classroom.
Mixed into all of PCMag's CES preview coverage is an interesting story about a projector that's no bigger than an iPod.
I think the fact that they're missing in all of this, is that porn doesn't care what size it is.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Finally something that is not wasting 90% of it's energy as heat, not to mention replacing ridiculously expensive bulbs every few hundred hours. :)
A low intensity version of this and you don't need a projection area any more, just beam it in directly
note to self: do not stare into laser with remaining eye...
MP3 Search Engine
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
I hope to hook this up to my laptop while playing Duke Nukem Forever with Chinese Democracy blaring on my stereo. What the heck, lets throw Obama a bone and have him in the White House.
My 25,000 shares of MVIS also thanks you. I'm betting big dollar that someday micro projectors will be in every music player and phone, much like almost every phone has a camera now (I made a similar bet on OVTI a few years ago and was not disappointed).
This would be awesome for an ultra-portable laptop: just a keyboard without the screen, just project onto any wall ... or use a very light roll-up screen.
While I'm sure the original price tag will be steep, this product could actually have some pretty sweet applications.
Imagine a singular device, the size of a cell phone, that could be a wholly working portable computer. You set it down and it projects a screen wherever you need it. Imagine that projector with something like this, and some sort of mouse replacement, and you'd have all your IO needs on the go. Instead of being restricted to tiny screens and keyboards, your portable device could be competition for your main desktop (which seems to be the route that consumer electronics are heading).
I know I can't wait for the day when I carry around one wallet sized (or smaller) device that is an audio player, a cell phone, and feature complete computer, capable of being used for the same applications my laptop is for, but with far less weight and size. Hopefully with devices like this, I won't have to wait until I'm near dead to enjoy such luxuries.
There's another projector called the Explay Oio that looks smaller: http://www.mobilewhack.com/explay-oio-the-first-real-pocket-nano-projector-on-dispaly-at-sid-2007/
Lately I've been giving some thought about how the hard part of multi-touch touch panel is the projection. Such a screen can be built from a sheet of glass+webcam, but the problem is that projecting an image back onto it requires a rather expensive projector. A $200-$300 laser projector would take this into the realm of 'affordable' technology.
It could also render the OLED technology of the 'optimus maximus' keyboard obsolete- many people have a second VGA port that they do not use. Using this port to display a key map onto an essentially transparent keyboard would do the same. It could also allow people to choose the decoration to be displayed on the rest of their keyboard.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Very cool indeed. Now where can we go with screen tech? Water vapour? Smoke screen? How about the in between thumb/forefinger thing I've seen in some futuristic shows? Instant on with a hand gesture.
And just think, by simply using 50 mW lasers, it will now be possible for the masses to skywrite commercials on the cloud cover. Or at the very least, everyone can have their own Bat Signal Device. Or project a 500' Goatse on a downtown sky scraper. I don't see how this can possibly go wrong. -M@
I, too, seem, to, be, having, an, asthma, attack.
On a serious not, I, too, welcome our media-infringing*, entertainment-system, goatse-projecting (don't look into laser with remaining sanity), toothy, overlords.
*do I recall something about needing to pay a fee for having a large enough (practically theater sized) entertainment setup?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Last year a different company made news demonstrating a monochrome version of their pico laser projector (PVPro) last year. They used LCoS to generate diffraction patterns rather than using a MEM mirror. http://www.lightblueoptics.com/
Three hours, 40 minutes and no posts?
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
Like this maybe?
http://www.usbfever.com/index_eproduct_view.php?products_id=417
I own a PK20 pocket projector. It fits in the palm of my hand, does 800x600 native, and uses ultra-bright LEDs with DLP tech to handle the images. It gets 10,000 hours of lamp life but is fairly dim as a result. It is much brighter then the first gen, PK10, but it still gets washed out easily. In a lightly lit room, I can do a 40" image, and in pitch darkness(or almost black), I can project around 60-70" without issue. I'm curious how the brightness of the lasers will be. Will it be able to project a 5' image in a lit room, or will it need the lights fully dimmed? I also wonder what the viewing angle will be, will it be very narrow with a fast drop off to the sides (which would make it less then ideal for portable presentations). Does anyone have any actual specs on the unit?
No doubt!
Personally I cant wait - this is TOO much fun, imagine the on-the-fly presentations you can do with this baby, no longer youll have to wave everyone over to your microscopic cell-phone screen to say "watch what I did this weekend".
Oh wait...
Thats not good...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I don't see how a scanning laser beam can produce a watchable image.
It'll be a cool toy, sure, but nothing more...
No sig today...
Between this and my EEE PC, I'll be able to do some very interesting things..
Bear With Me
I just realized, half the fun of xkcd is sharing - it does help that there is a comic for EVERY occasion.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
"See that? Its the world's smallest projector showing a blue screen of death just for you"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Very cool product. The name sucks though. Google finds 2.560.000.000 hits for "SHOW".
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
OMG ZOMG when can I play duck hunt with it
For a brief moment I thought it said "World's Smallest Penis" !
I thought "that's funny I didn't see a webcam in my bathroom this morning" !
I don't see how a projector using coherent light can work without ugly speckle patterns in the image. Anyone have any ideas?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why don't these devices support normal resolutions?
If they are going through all that trouble to make a really cool tiny projector, can't they figure out how to make it support 1024x768 without resampling the image down?
I realize that 848 by 480 is used by some video formats and is 16:9, but still. Anyone using this to show a lecture or demonstrate how to use a computer program is going to be disappointed.
-David
No wireless. Smaller than a nomad. Lame.
and that they'll insist on it being DRM'd to death
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I can see this being huge if the company can get a deal to add these to laptops. I would love to have a tiny projector built into my laptop. No more carrying around all those cords to hook up to someone else's TV/projector for a presentation.
On the other hand I would not want to see an office meeting with 10+ of these. It's hard enough to get that many people to share one screen already, just imagine if they all had a projector to throw up their power point vomit with.
Link to the developer's site: http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/standalone.html
Looks like they're pitching this as an accessory for mobile phones as well as mini stand-alone projos.
A whole new world of mobile phone-related road accidents beckon...
More positively, I've tried some cars with head-up displays, and they really work. Now if you had a GPS-enabled phone that could project driving instructions onto the screen in front of you...now, that would be cool. Trouble is, you'd probably end up being tempted to open another window and 'just try and do a couple of mails' whilst waiting for the green light.
Much of the weight of a laptop is the screen. The screen is also a major battery drain. With this tiny projector it would be possible to build lighter laptops.
Its battery lasts only an hour and a half but it is tiny. It sounds like the projector uses less energy than a regular laptop screen.
Another possibility is that different size screens could be implemented. For handheld use, the screen could be tiny, only a few inches. For desktop use a larger screen could be folded out.
anybody remember that Sean Connery scifi flick Zardoz? An good well thought out plot and Charlotte Rampling's knockers could not save it from some hammed up acting and a general public with no intelligence. But one of the cooler points of the film was the rings that all the immortals wore - voice driven data interfaces to the central computer (called the tabernacle if memory serves me well..) and capable of projecting images, movies and information onto any nearby wall with perfect clarity.
we now have projected keyboards, mini laser projectors and infra-red tracking - come on, lets build our own mini computers and dump those expensive power hungry boxes on our desks. if we could finally solve the porblem of mesh computing and get rid of the ISP monopolies then that would be fantastic as well, lets hope OLPC proves the concept viable..
What's up with all these companies from Redmond, Washington being called Microsomething? Is Microvision something that is needed to see Bill's Micro-soft?
Do not look into projector with remaining eye!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
You... never know.
Call me when they get it down to the size of a shuffle.
Sure, small is cool, but these laser projection systems seem better than LCD/Lens. Lower power, cooler, presumably no need to focus. And can easily be made quite portable at a higher resolution.
Wasn't this called the ZX Spectrum?
someone puts it in a laptop? That would make for an interesting board meeting, to put up a powerpoint in the whiteboard, at the point where someone realizes there's no projector in the board room.
6 years ago no one would have believed it was possible, let alone practical, and certainly not affordable, to have a camera in their laptop lid. Now look what we have - around 50% of the laptops sold today have built-in web-cams. That makes a projector the next logical step.
Get one of those bluetooth mice that logitec makes, the really small ones with the thumb operated trackball and built-in laser pointer and usual mouse buttons, and toss that in, and you have the ideal portable presentation system. (beats the "gather round the laptop screen" scenario)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
With laser based projection, I wonder if it's possible to produce polarized stereo TVs. If so, then getting an projection system would be about $700. The only problem I have with the World's Smallest Projector is the resolution. I'm hoping that soon the resolution will be HD quality.
The hologram of a beautiful mermaid appears :
"Help me, Obi Whale Sharkobi ! You're my only hope !"....
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In fact something similar applies to a conventional projector; you can see the dust in the air quite clearly close to the beam exit, but it is not a problem when watching the screen.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A project that can fit in your pocket, project a 848x480 image at virtually any distance, use so little power that it can run on batteries, not get hot to the touch, and costs less than $300?!?!? Are you kidding me!?!? This one is a no-brainner. This thing will sell like hotcakes if they can deliver on the promises.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The whole "24fps" thing was invented by Disney and it relates to smooth *movement*, not lack of flicker.
Cinemas can get away with lower frame rates because film projectors have a duty cycle where each image stays in place for 90-odd percent of the time then they switch to the next frame as quickly as possible (this is why film projectors make a clattering noise - they jerk the film through the mechanism). This means that most of the time there's a solid image being projected.
CRT monitors flicker a *lot* at 60Hz, and they've got persistence of image in the phosphor. To completely eliminate CRT flicker you have to go to 75Hz or more. Even then that only eliminates flicker in the center of vision, you can still see it in the corner of your eye where there's more rods than cones.
With no persistence the human eye can see flicker well over 100Hz, maybe even as high as 150Hz.
No sig today...
No, I see them as well, and so do many other people.
Sorry.
PS: DLP doesn't scan the image line by line, it projects the entire image all at once. This gives it a much wider duty cycle (ratio of "on" to "off") than a scanning laser beam. A wide duty cycle reduces flicker a *lot*, it's the only reason DLP projectors work at all.
No sig today...
Seriously, though, if this was put into an iPhone, think how cool it could be... I could edit the presentation AND project it on my Cell Phone and then spend half an hour trying to upload it to the server afterwards over the Edge network so that others could look at it.
So how come I can see CRTs flicker at 60Hz? Surely my eye should be compensating!
No sig today...
Combine that with the projection keyboard, and your PDA would turn into a laptop just by putting it on a table with a white wall behind it.
I'm wondering how you can get true colour from lasers. One of the defining characteristics of lasers is that they emit only a single wavelength. Even if you have true RGB lasers, will it be possible to truly get a yellow from G and B?
The eeeeeeepc was supposed to be $200 too. That stupid OLED keyboard was supposed to be $500. I don't see this going for less than $600 by the time the bean counters get done with it. For $200-299 it's a toy, and everyone will buy one, but very few companies seem to understand that price point. I'll believe it when I see it.
Or a device to point at helicopters!
There is a problem at the extreme ends of the spectrum, where both the red and the blue sensors are getting less sensitive, which means it is not possible to get the full range of visible colors from just three lasers without risking eye damage. But in truth you are not likely to notice the difference.
In fact, it is better to use lasers or narrow-spectrum LEDS because they permit of more precise selective activation of the color sensors than is possible using filters over black body light sources.
As a side note, owing to very small natural variations, everybody perceives color slightly differently from everybody else. In fact, one of my eyes sees slightly different colors from the other and this is not uncommon. We can ensure that output equipment produces a consistent color value, but we cannot ensure that everybody sees exactly what we do.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Very cool - I've been dying to experiment with laser projection for years. I'm glad someone has the resources to actually pull it off. This technology makes the following scenario possible due to the lens-less infinite focus of the "ray casting": 1) mount laser projector to top helmet projecting forward image covering complete FOV 2) wear helmet on head 3) insert self into small, unlit dome with white interior projection surface 4) use head motion tracking to determine point of view then adjust projected 3D world to match 5) locate BFG9000 and engage target 6) ...?
7) Profit!
"Help me Obi Wan! You're my last hope ..."
Big deal. I saw McGuyver do it with a 9V battery, a white LED, part of his calculator watch, 2 paper clips, a piece of bubble gum (and its aluminum wrapper), and a magnifying glass, and it was HD.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
I dislike LED brake lights because they appear to flicker.
I see this most of all on Cadillacs, when the parking lights are on, but the brake lights are not - particularly if you turn your head while looking at the lights. The LEDs on Cadillacs apparently are dimmed by a PWM circuit that flashes the LEDs rapidly to simulate the lower brightness level. This is a totally inappropriate way of controlling the brightness of lights on a moving vehicle, because it makes for weird strobe-light effects in traffic, and it's actually more expensive and introduces more failure points than the alternative. It really makes Cadillacs look bad.
The aftermarket LED lights used on heavy trucks do not flicker unless there is a bad connection somewhere. They are designed using the simplest method of dimming for the parking light function - a simple pair of diodes to isolate the brake and parking light inputs, and a resistor in line with the parking light input.
Pretty much all LED third brake light (CHMSL) modules do not flicker at all as they generally have no dimming function and are either on or off. If you're seeing them flicker, you may be hallucinating.
I also see rainbows on 4x DLP projectors. Do I have superman eyes?
No, probably just a brain tumor.
Putting moderation advice in your
This thing will sell like hotcakes if they can deliver on the promises.
Yeah, I want one too. Note that Mitsubishi is coming out with a laser projection TV based on this technology at CES, this month. By the way, Novalux is the company behind the technology. There's going to be both rear and front projection systems. And theater versions too. IMO, this is gonna be the end of LCD and plasma, and everything else. The next IPhone will have it, you can bet on it.
Looks pretty awesome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0yMRrhiKs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ-uvP2qrYA
Be the first to comment!
-- Boycott Shell
Obviously there are going to be contrast issues when projecting in a well lit environment (as with normal projectors) but the narrow wavelength of the RGB lasers present opportunities for smarter screen designs. A screen that just reflects those narrow wavelengths rather than the whole spectrum could look quite dark until illuminated.
Nice concept for portability and low energy, but it needs to be updated to modern video resolutions. One year from now, just about everyone in their target market will have an HD flat panel (or multiple) and the output of this thing will look like crap by comparison. On the other hand, that's what they said about the Wii...a year ago.
Seriously, though. If you want to share video in a public place like a bus or a mall, you aren't going to project it on a surface anyone can see it on. You'd probably get arrested for not having a permit or sued for a copyright-infringing public presentation.
And if you want to do a projection in a slightly less public venue (say a friend's family room or a client's conference room), you'd expect better resolution. The product is too gadget-ty to attract the low-tech end of the mainstream and too low-res to attract the high-tech end. Maybe a market for a year or so until analog TV gets canned, then a narrowing market segment as DVD players phase out for HD (pick your format) and it becomes the lowest-res thing on the market.
We are the 198 proof..
Ed is the true path to Nirvana! Ed has been the choice of educated and ignorant alike for centuries! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
(Goddamned "Lameness filter" has lessened the correct impact of this holy rant.)
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
And I'm still waiting.....
http://www.smartforumz.org/forums/showthread.php?t=485
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Wouldn't it be awesome. An iphone with a built in mini projector, and one of those lazer keyboards. all in one unit.
That WOULD be 21st. century my friend.
You really would look like a mad wizard pinching the air with both fingers as you wave through the apple touch interface.
And amazingly all the technology is here NOW.
I'd go ant patent the idea but I'd say 1,843,063 people have already beaten me to it!! : >
All this tech. is here NOW and with the way Apple are innovating, it shouldn'r be long before you get it.
:>
You mentioned a mouse. That wouldn't be needed. It just happens that the keyboard device you mentioned could easily be modified
to be manipulated in the same way as ipod touch. Why would you ever need something so obsolete as a mouse.
Think mini projector+iphone+lazer keyboard all in one. Ahh, throw GPS and mp3 and movies too : >
Only thing is, I hope the companies who show innovation like Apple, Microvision etc reep the benefits.
Not, copy-cat companies like Samsung etc. tha will just rip off the tech and find a way to make it cheeper, slimmer and more efficient. That would be too bad. Hope they DRM the shit out of it!!
now some twit is going to be overlaying pr0n at the movie theater instead of a small red dot.
~Vexed and loving it!
Could this be the future of laptops? Just add a tiny camera somewhere and project the image of a keyboard on the other side, and read motion of fingers over the camera. This may seem far fetched, but all the required technology is already available. Finally full blown computers you can carry in your pocket without giving up on the big display and input. Heck we might do away with the touchpad and manage better UI input.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
24fps movies don't flicker because the projector lamp is on for 100% of the time. All that changes is the image, not the brightness.
Scanning a dot of light across a wall (or CRT) is a completely different situation.
No sig today...
The persistance of phosphor is tweakable. I've used perfectly flicker free 60Hz monitors (eg. the old SGI machines) because the monitors were designed for a single display resolution/frequency (1280x1024@60Hz).
Modern PC monitors have less persistence because they have to work at many different resolutions/frequencies. This needs different phosphors and the refresh rate has to go up.
No sig today...
Made me think of some sensors I installed a while back that shipped with what looked like "The Worlds Smallest (Penis) Protector" rolled onto the inlet ports(about .25in). I had a bit of fun with them at work for a day or two. What is really sad is what I saw first was "The Worlds Smallest Protractor", "huh?" I said, to myself of course. Damn I can be such a frackin' geek, damn I did it again. I'll just shut up now...
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
> "60hz is easily visible .... 85hz I can't detect."
This is NOT a function of the eye
I've used high resolution monitors which were perfectly flicker free at 60Hz, I could also make a monitor which flickers at 100Hz. This is a function of the persistence of the screen phosphor, not a function of the human eye.
Scanning a laser beam across a wall (ie. the projector) is nothing like scanning an electron beam across some phosphor.
No sig today...
The technology needs to go just a little further and become just a little smaller, and then perhaps it might be feasible in an invisibility suit spec?
http://www.king5.com/video/featured-index.html?nvid=205525
very cool! The quality is surprisingly good.. and the infinite focus is pretty neat. I see that it is connected directly to an IPOD... I wonder what kind of cable is necessary for this....
For $200-$300 later this year.. I can't wait to try it out!