From the site:
Screen material: $35.00 Lumenlab
Black Material: $25.00 fabric shop
Flock Tape: Free Donation
Motor: $19.00 MPJA
DPDT Switch: $2.00 MPJA
Wood: $12.00 Menards
Copper pipe: $10.00 Home Depo
Copper fittings: $2.00 Home Depo
Conduit weight: $4.00 Home Depo
Wiring: Free My Garage
Velcro: $14.00 Fastenal
Hardware: $3.00 Fastenal
Total: $126.00
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That is awesome. 126″ = 10.5′ Wow. He did it cheaply too which is very important.

Posted at 1:15 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by joelanders

Hey brad, it’s time to take down your christmas tree :-D

Posted at 1:55 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by jimmy

I’m also selling one currently on ebay. It’s the read deal, not motorized or home-made. Ebay Item ID: 5856372292

Posted at 2:14 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by Robert m.

Nice project, but I feel the need to point out two grammatical errors. 1. What is being done with the switches is “polarity reversal”, not “phase reversal”. AC has phase. DC has polarity. 2. It is Home Depot, not Home Depo. Depo (Prevara) is an injection for birth control. A depot is a railroad or bus station, or a warehouse. Yeah I know… I’m being a pain with grammar, but language is the tool we build with and this is actually a nifty project worthy of a good write up :) I’m vaguely freaked out by the choice of motor and switch… I didn’t know they even made that particular big toggle switch with the big red and black ON OFF ON plate anymore. I used the same switched 20 years ago when attempting to build my first robot. I used windshield wiper motors to drive it. I wonder what my parents would say if I popped by their place and wanted the remains of my old robot thats been hanging in their store room for two decades… I guess I’ll find out. K9 must live again!

Posted at 2:26 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by Spherical monkey

Spherical monkey, you will notice that that wiring diagram is from another source, and in that instance it was used in an electric guitar phase reversal. I just neglected to say that it was polarity. And I guess I never noticed the home depot thing. I work for Fastenal, so what do I care if I spelt it wrong ;) Also I choose that style switch because it fit with the look and feel of my projector. I liked the “old” AV look.

Posted at 6:48 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by Brad O'Connor

Cool project brad, the only suggestion I could make is to put limit switches on the screen so the motor stops automatically instead of waiting by the switch to stop it yourself. some of those light sensitive sensors might do the trick, when the bottom of the screen passes by one it cuts the light and so the screeen stops.

Posted at 6:56 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by DR cross

Wouldn’t adding more weight *increase* the severity of the wrinkles? What causes them, I suspect, is the uneven amount of tension across the horizontal span of the screen, which is in turn caused by the sides of the screen not being evenly cut/framed. The only way to remove them would be to recut/reframe the screen material to more exacting (i.e. straight and right) dimensions, while weighting the outside corners slightly more than the center.

Posted at 8:38 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by Ethan

Brad: Fastenal eh? Know Todd T.?

Posted at 10:10 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by flaunt_dzx

I thought about a limit switch, but the aspect ratio can vary a lot between my games, dvds, and HDTV. So I figured it would be best to just manually adjust right now. Maybe I can set it up with 3 different settings or something. If you guys missed it there is a video. I repdated my site with some “corrections” and I forgot I never saved it after I made the bigger video link. So look at the upper left. “screen in action”

Posted at 10:10 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by Brad O'Connor

Actually, the limit switch might be easy to implement if you can somehow use the “parking sensor” inputs to shut down the motor.

Have you ever examined how old garage door openers used to build their limit switches? It’s really neat, actually. They connect a long piece of threaded rod to the shaft assembly that operates the drive sprocket. They then mount switches near both ends of the threaded rod, and put a captive travelling nut on the threaded rod itself. As the motor spins, it screws (or unscrews) the captive nut along the shaft. When the nut hits the switch, the door shuts off.

That may be overkill, of course. Dr. Cross’ sugestion is much simpler.

A limit switch doesn’t imply that you can or can’t stop the screen travel anywhere in between. It just prevents the motor from spinning so far that it damages your equipment.

Posted at 11:42 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by jaded

flaunt_dzx, where is this todd t. from? and what does he do? I am a sales rep in the madison area, and I went to school at winona state.

Posted at 2:53 am on Jan 22nd, 2006 by Brad O'Connor

well brad, if you want a few different aspect ratios, why not get a microcontroller and use some IR proximity sensors on your wall, push a button for “game” and it lowers the screen to the right size for games, “movies” for movies, etc.

click my name for the sparkfun.com ir proximity sensors.

Posted at 3:59 am on Jan 22nd, 2006 by monster

Brad, he was the E-Business manager at Fastenal up until last year. The corporate office is in Winona, so I thought you had worked there.

Just thought I’d ask.

Posted at 11:41 am on Jan 22nd, 2006 by flaunt_dzx

You might want to have a look at Carsten Heuer’s project using two old scanners to integrate a motorized projector screen into his shelf unit (see URL under ma name). Sorry, the descripion is in german, but the pictures at the bottom should be clear enough.

Posted at 4:40 am on Jan 23rd, 2006 by Johannes

Wrinkles are not visible during playback? i think someone needs a pair of fresh glases, not to spoil the fun but watching a movie on a surface thats not very flat is like watching the waters surface with small waves on it and saying the image is not distorted. Theres a reason for why the screens that have a frame are insane expensive.

Posted at 3:11 am on Jan 24th, 2006 by max

I have to agree with max, those wrinkles have got to be distracting. Especially on dark scenes. We’re currently working on a HT setup using a 100″ screen that has some slight wrinkles, it’s driving us up the wall. The wrinkle is not that bad, but it’s enough that we can see it…especially on scenes that pan. Anyone know the best way to remove wrinkles from a Dalite glass bead pull down screen?

Posted at 11:08 am on Jan 25th, 2006 by lechon

I built a remote controlled projection screen a while ago. It’s slightly more complicated as I couldn’t hang the screen from the ceiling, so I had to put it on top of a cabinet.

Here is a link to my blog entry describing the project:

http://www.webweavertech.com/ovidiu/weblog/archives/000429.html

Posted at 9:23 pm on Jan 25th, 2006 by Ovidiu predescu

Hey Brad, its Probin here. I just gone through your project and found it very interesting to be implemented, but the problem is that I can not figure out the various components and their connections clearly. So, if you can provide me with detailed information regarding this project then it will be a great help for me. You can mail me at singh_probin@yahoo.co.in I’ll be waiting for your responce. Thanks!

Posted at 6:01 pm on Jan 31st, 2006 by singh_probin

Does anyone have the pictures and instructions for this? The links are dead.

Thanks!

los

Posted at 3:20 pm on Jul 20th, 2006 by los

Hi!!!
please i seem to have a problem viewing the whole thing. if possible, pls send it to my mail…dblack4wattrow@yahoo.com. thanks… Warkani

Posted at 2:52 pm on Feb 23rd, 2009 by Warkani