The team from Tech-On has taken the time to teardown two interesting microprojectors. The first model they tackled was the Optoma PK101. It’s based around a digital micromirror device (DMD) like those used in DLP. Separate high intensity red, green, and blue LEDs provide the light source. A fly-eye style lens reduces variations between images. They noted that both the LEDs and processors were tied directly to the chassis to dissipate heat.
The next projector was the 3M Co MPro110. It uses Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) technology. The light source is a single bright white LED. The projector seems to have more provisions for getting rid of heat than the previous one. The most interesting part was the resin polarizing beam splitter. It not only reflected specific polarizations, but also adjust the aspect ratio.
[via Make]
Nice find, but I don’t like the way the article is written in a journalistic fashion full of vague statements with the occasional well thought out quotes from “an engineer”. I’d prefer if the engineer just wrote the article to begin with…
Great, now they can get a move on making cheaper projectors, minimum 720p under $300.
Maybe when the parts or the tech gets cheap enough we can have DIY LED projectors.
Here’s a challenge I propose… one of you hackers should take two very small LCD screens and make some video goggles on the cheap… and post some instructions on how to do so =)
1…2…3… go!
–Mike
Electronics Goldmine has a couple of surplus DMD devices (which they call “MEMS assembly”) One is here: http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G13751
So, um, does anyone have any information about how to DRIVE one of these things? I bought one a long time ago with the idea of maybe getting it to “shimmer” as a stand-alone device, but TI is noticeably silent when it comes to anything actually resembling a datasheet for these things.
these show promise
A very Nice Website Ive seen Uptill. Excellent post. Keep it up! Good day
So, could it be possible to hack the 3m brighter, since brigtness seems to be the main issue with the projector? By adding or changing leds for example? Please make a hack for this!
in theory you could install a 10W LED in there, if it would mechanically fit. Interestingly the full power may not be required and I also found a trick involving glueing with UV glue a bundle of TOSlink cables to the emitter allowing the light source to be located elsewhere.
Another useful technique is to “drill out” the centre of some 20,000mcd white LEDs and glue a fibre with UV glue, this couples around 70% of the light into the fibre. Tried with cyano and its not quite as effective.
best glue to use is the “uv glue” in the red tubes off Ebay, sets in under a minute outdoors. It owns for glass joining too.
I am currently doing a DLP LED mod as someone has kindly unloaded some broken projectors with burned out bulbs (180 UKP is insane when 100W LED is only 60 UKP…)
Peace.
I have one of these, they work ok apart from not being able to charge it over usb when its on. Wondering if there is some sort of hack to allow it to run when charging.
How can we hack these (I have a Merlin Pico)to get higher brightness , HW and SW aspects ?