Old Phone Upcycled Into Pico Projector, ASMR

To update an old saying for the modern day, one man’s e-waste is another man’s bill of materials. Upcycling has always been in the hacker’s toolkit, and cellphones provide a wealth of resources for those bold enough to seize them. [Huy Vector] was bold enough, and transformed an old smartphone into a portable pico projector and an ASMR-style video. That’s what we call efficiency!

Kidding aside, the speech-free video embedded below absolutely gives enough info to copy along with [Huy Vector] even though he doesn’t say a word the whole time. You’ll need deft hands and a phone you really don’t care about, because one of the early steps is pulling the LCD apart to remove the back layers to shine an LED through. You’ll absolutely need an old phone for that, since that trick doesn’t apply to the OLED displays that most flagships have been rocking the past few years.

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No Home Cinema Is Complete Without A Motorized Projector

In the home of the future, everything is automated. Some of us are already there, in dwellings fully tricked-out with IoT and smart home devices. But they don’t somehow look as futuristic as a home in which everything is motorized. We don’t know whether this was the intention, but we certainly get a futuristic vibe from [Sam Baker]’s home cinema projector mount. It’s no mere bracket, instead on command the projector descends from concealment in the ceiling on a custom scissor lift mechanism.

A scissor lift is a simple enough mechanism, but since he was 3D printing one that had to withstand the weight of the projector, it took him a while to get it right. Even the lead screw which drives it is also printed, turned by a stepper motor. As the brains of the unit needn’t be particularly accomplished, an Arduino Nano does the job well enough.

It’s fair to say that his projector isn’t the heaviest of models, but the result glides smoothly down from the ceiling for a perfect home cinema experience. We like it.