5000 Lumen LED Projector? Naw, How About A Whopping 1 Candela?

June 23, 2014 by 23 Comments

1 candle projector

One of our readers recently found a ASK Proxima C170 (also sold as the InFocus LP600) in the waste bin, thrown away because it stopped working — He snatched it up and decided to try tinkering with it. A visual inspection quickly found the problem, a 100uF cap had blown!

He replaced the capacitor and got the projector to turn on again without much difficulty. Not wanting to pay a few hundred dollars for a bulb he’s ordered a 5000lm 50W LED array from China to give it new life as an LED projector, because as it turns out it’s a fairly simple hack to trick the projector into thinking it has an official lamp in it. It’s just a matter of shorting a few leads on some of the photo-couplers!

In fact, once this hack is done, you can use any kind of light source you want! So just for kicks he decided to try using a tea light candle. It actually managed to project an image on the wall thanks to the optics of the projector! Functional? Not really, but it’s a cool way to prove a successful hack towards an even cooler end project though!

For other fun projector hacks, check out this roundup we did a few years ago.

[Thanks thefamoushat!]

Home Made Small Form Factor LED Projector

January 15, 2010 by 26 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ8Kq2wLrf0]

[Newtonn2] dropped a tip in our inbox this morning that made us quite happy. This is a step by step build of a small form factor LED based projector. While the size may not get some of you too excited at first, those of us who have built projectors before know that home made ones are usually quite large. This one is roughly the size of the small office projectors you would see in a large retailer.  He’s using a 30 watt LEd for the light and we didn’t notice a lumen measurement anywhere, but it looks bright enough to be watchable. Pictures usually turn out dark, so in person, the projection probably looks more bright and crisp. Now he just needs to find a high definition LCD that size.

LED Projector

December 6, 2008 by 6 Comments

led_projector

[PuffMag1cDrag0n] shows us how to make a fairly simple projected LED display. The projector is made from a 13×7 LED matrix and a couple fresnel lenses. The layout and construction is similar to the Lumenlab projector setup, only replacing all the lighting and LCD with an LED array. It communicates via serial port and is powered by a pic micro 16f648. We would love to see an RGB version of this. The directions are a bit rushed, but you should be able to get the gist. Just remember that you need some pretty powerful LEDs to throw a big image.

Fail Of The Week: Projector LED Retrofit

May 15, 2014 by 30 Comments

fotw-projector-repair

That’s a deal for a project, how hard could it be to fix it up?

If you’re a real hacker we’d wager you’ve fallen for this type of thought process before. [Luft] bought this used Sharp XR-10X-L projector about a year back and planned to retrofit it with an LED bulb. He gathered all the parts and got to work, successfully testing and installing the modifications. But as luck would have it, the project is stuck in some type of boot loop.

This fail is certainly not for lack of preparation. The first post documenting his adventure shows that the hack has been done before, he acquired the service manual for this particular hardware, and he did his homework when ordering the parts. Success requires circumventing some sensors which ensure the case and internals are in place, and making sure the electronic status of the ballast is reported correctly event though it’s not needed for the LED source. Power-on gets as far as illuminating all the indicator lights in green as it should, but is then followed closely by a reboot sequence.

He tried watching the serial port to see if he can get any status info there but no dice. In keeping with the nature of this column, let’s see if we can provide any constructive troubleshooting advice in the comments.

2013-09-05-Hackaday-Fail-tips-tileFail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Wednesday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and sending us a link to the story — or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels.

Hackaday Logo Projector From A Single LED

October 31, 2013 by 11 Comments

Here’s another Trinket Contest entry that was interesting enough for its own feature. [Adam] made his own Hackaday version of the Bat signal. It’s not nearly as big, but the concept is the same. Using this single modified LED he’s able to project a 12″ image that seems quite well-defined (more pictures below).

The LED is one he pulled from an old flashlight. After sanding the dome flat he made a jig which positioned it inside of his laser cutter. From there he etched the 0.1″ logo and filled the negative space with some ink. The remaining surface was polished to help the light shine through, then positioned in front of a jeweler’s loupe to magnify the image.

There’s just a couple of hours left before the Trinket Contest draws to a close. Get your entry in for a chance to win!

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Epson Projector LED Mod

March 28, 2013 by 46 Comments

Projector bulbs can be incredibly expensive to replace. Sometimes it’s more cost efficient to just buy a whole new projector instead of a new bulb. [Shawn] recently found a nice deal on an ‘as is’ Epson EMP-S4 on eBay and decided to take a chance. He assumed it probably worked with the exception of the missing lamp the seller mentioned. His suspicions were correct, and one custom LED mod later, his projector was up and rolling.

Without a stock lamp installed, the projector would give an error message and shut itself off. So, the first step was to wire up a little bypass. Once that was taken care of, [Shawn] installed a 30W 2000 lumen LED and custom fit an old Pentium CPU heatsink to keep the LEDs temperature down. He also wired up the heatsink fan in parallel with the stock exhaust fan for good measure.  Optical lenses help focus the light, and some custom wiring makes the LED turn on and off just like the stock lamp would.

In the end, his first experiment was a success, but [Shawn] wants to try an 8000 lumen 100W LED to make it about as bright as the stock lamp was. Check out a little video walkthrough after the break.

[Thanks Shawn]

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