So you've built your own LCD projector and everything's running smoothly. Focus is adjusted, the contrast and brightness are good, you've blocked all the light leaks, and the projector never overheats. You've watched a few movies, played some games...now what?
A DIY projector opens up some possibilities, ones you really wouldn't consider with a commercial projector due to the high bulb cost. You can leave it on longer, assuming you're prepared to spend a little extra on the electricity bill.
Let's see what interesting uses we can come up with for a DIY projector. I'll start off with a few:
1. Google Earth + gyroscopic mouse
What a fascinating tool and/or toy! Run this program fullscreen on the projector and surf the world. Your wall become a window to every corner of the earth, with 3D models of buildings in some major cities, high-resolution terrain mapping in places like the Grand Canyon, and incredible detail (you can see children in schoolyards) in the Boston area.
2. Newsmap
Newsmap is a Flash applet that updates itself with news headlines from Google News. It presents them in a unique fashion, using color and size to indicate the subject and frequency of articles. It also runs very well in a fullscreen web browser (hit F11). You end up with a wall containing all the top news stories, continually updated.
3. Murals
Some have used their projector to cast a large image on a wall or other surface, which they then use to trace an enlarged drawing. This is common enough with overhead and opaque projectors, but with a DIY LCD projector you don't need to feel guilty about using all the life of a $500 bulb.
What other uses are out there? I'll be interested to see what people use their projector for besides movies and games.
A DIY projector opens up some possibilities, ones you really wouldn't consider with a commercial projector due to the high bulb cost. You can leave it on longer, assuming you're prepared to spend a little extra on the electricity bill.
Let's see what interesting uses we can come up with for a DIY projector. I'll start off with a few:
1. Google Earth + gyroscopic mouse
What a fascinating tool and/or toy! Run this program fullscreen on the projector and surf the world. Your wall become a window to every corner of the earth, with 3D models of buildings in some major cities, high-resolution terrain mapping in places like the Grand Canyon, and incredible detail (you can see children in schoolyards) in the Boston area.
2. Newsmap
Newsmap is a Flash applet that updates itself with news headlines from Google News. It presents them in a unique fashion, using color and size to indicate the subject and frequency of articles. It also runs very well in a fullscreen web browser (hit F11). You end up with a wall containing all the top news stories, continually updated.
3. Murals
Some have used their projector to cast a large image on a wall or other surface, which they then use to trace an enlarged drawing. This is common enough with overhead and opaque projectors, but with a DIY LCD projector you don't need to feel guilty about using all the life of a $500 bulb.
What other uses are out there? I'll be interested to see what people use their projector for besides movies and games.
I'm not sure about newer shooting games, but I'm sure you can play duck hunt and old shooting games like that, unless the huge size of the screen interferes with it.
Actually I don't think you can use those games, they depended on the television raster to tell where the gun was pointing.
Lets not forget the most important thing you can do with your DIY Projector... Impress the Ladies with tales of your great technical conquest! Be sure to throw in a few optical formulas/etc for added oomph.
Well i recently tried a 3d game that uses the red and blue glasses for more 3d immersion.. and it works very well, much better than your tiny monitor. i dont know many games that use red blue style of rendering. But i am a programmer, and in the games industry, and am creating few small novelty games just for this purpose. If anyone is interested.. drop me your email, and ill send the games out as i finish them.
@Luca.. while i like to talk technical with alot of ppl. I tend not do do that so much with "the ladies" as they have very sensative geek radar. 🙂.. I try to fly below it.
I know th eolder shooting games only need light changes. Like in duck hunt, when you press the button on the gun, the screen goes black for a split second, and the duck stays white. If the gun can tell that the lighted area ( the duck) is in its view, and the surrounding is dark, then it counts as a hit. So i dont knwo what you mean by raster?
rifraf77 said:
Actually you can play pretty much all games with the red blue 3d glasses. All you need to do it go to the nvidia site and download the 3d glasses drivers. They have two options on the display settings, one is an option to use the normal shutter eye glasses and the other is to use the red/blue glasses!!! awesome! 🙂
you can run any game with the 3d pretty much. give it a go!
That's interesting about the Nintendo light guns, I must have been thinking of something else like the old computer light pens. I guess if your LCD is fast enough, the Zapper should work!
*OFFTOPIC* (sorry to go off topic, but.......)
phillip0101 - I see your in bristol, Do you know any where local that I can get a bulb, triplet lens and frensels... I have everything else but have no crdit card so i cant order them online.
phillip0101 - I see your in bristol, Do you know any where local that I can get a bulb, triplet lens and frensels... I have everything else but have no crdit card so i cant order them online.
@phillip0101.
I would assume that you must have an NVIDIA video card for this to work ???? if so then its not for everyone.. many of us use the superior radeon line of cards 🙂
I would assume that you must have an NVIDIA video card for this to work ???? if so then its not for everyone.. many of us use the superior radeon line of cards 🙂
I like Radeon as much as the next guy, but I have to admit that Nvidia has some features that make it more attractive for home theater setups. The video zooming and rotating, the automatic video shunting to second monitor works very smoothly, and of course they have a keystone adjuster though I'm not sure how much use it is.
buying without credit card
atsnom: The online DIY projector stores can't be very large businesses with our small community as customers. I know lumenlab and DIYprojectorCompany are both essentially one-man operations.
I would bet that exclusiv-online is the same. Have you tried emailing them to ask if you could send them a Euro-denominated bank check (cheque, draft, or whatever you call them in Englad) for the parts you want? I think any of the DIY stores would be willing to do this, since they would be getting paid in advance of sending any parts. Another possiblity would be for you to open a cash balance PayPal account. You send PayPal a check (or do an electronic transfer from your bank account to PayPal. Then you use PayPal to pay for your order. I think you can do that without a credit card, again as long as you pre-pay.
atsnom: The online DIY projector stores can't be very large businesses with our small community as customers. I know lumenlab and DIYprojectorCompany are both essentially one-man operations.
I would bet that exclusiv-online is the same. Have you tried emailing them to ask if you could send them a Euro-denominated bank check (cheque, draft, or whatever you call them in Englad) for the parts you want? I think any of the DIY stores would be willing to do this, since they would be getting paid in advance of sending any parts. Another possiblity would be for you to open a cash balance PayPal account. You send PayPal a check (or do an electronic transfer from your bank account to PayPal. Then you use PayPal to pay for your order. I think you can do that without a credit card, again as long as you pre-pay.
During the day (late afternoon) me and my roommates have a screensaver running that displays random pictures they've taken over the past few years. We're always looking for more so for now there isn't a shortage of drunken people or random craziness around campus. Lifesize pictures can be pretty amusing when people walk in and say "Woah, that's me up there!"
One other thing I've been planning to do when we hold parties (assuming there aren't so many people the floor is shaking a lot) is to have one of the Winamp visualizations playing. Some of them can be rather trippy and the projection offers plenty of ambient lighting (relatively) when all the lights are turned off. ;-)
One other thing I've been planning to do when we hold parties (assuming there aren't so many people the floor is shaking a lot) is to have one of the Winamp visualizations playing. Some of them can be rather trippy and the projection offers plenty of ambient lighting (relatively) when all the lights are turned off. ;-)
atsnom said:
i really dont have a clue where to ger lenses and fresnels around bristol, england in general is rubbish for finding shops with these sorts of random things.
In regard to the Metal halide bulb + starter etc, there is a shop in bristol i think, but its not gonna be that cheap and im not sure exactly what its called or where it is, you would have to check on the net.
rifraf77 said:
yep, you would need an nvidia card which is obviously much better than radeon...maybe, actually i have no clue about radeon video cards, never really looked into getting one lol. 😀
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