[Michiel] gave us a little shout-out by drawing the Hackaday logo with his recently completed 16×8 pixel laser projector. It uses a spinning set of mirrors mounted at slightly different angles to redirect the path of the red laser diode.
The projector is driven by an Arduino. To give it more than just a hard-coded existence [Michiel] included an Xbee module. This lets him connect to it with a computer in order to stream messages. One of the demo videos linked in his project log shows the web interface he coded which will push a message typed in the submission form out to the projector where it is scrolled like a marquee.
This type of spinning display is one of a few common methods for making laser projectors. In the image above you can see the optical sensor which is used to sync the diode with the spinning mirrors, each of which is responsible for a different row of pixels. He lists off several things that he learned when working on the project. We think the most important is the timing issues which go into something like this.
Awesome writeup, very detailed, however I’d love to see a video of the device in action.
@GeriBoss
Thanks GeriBoss, and there are videos on the website as hyperlinks in the capabilities section, such as this one: http://www.thepsychologicaltechnologist.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Webcam-fingers.mp4
There are several linked in the article.
You should have read it…
Very cool stuff Mikey! Will come and see it in action soon!
cheers