Fulcrum's First - 17 Inch:, Black Friday is Coming make sure your ready! Options

[Fulcrum]

Yesterday, I was gettng a littel too bored, so I decided to fiddle with the PJ's FFC again. I worked on it for about 30 mins and gave up.

Then today my package from DIY-Beamer arrived. I had purchased two dual jumpers, one as a back-up just in case one didn't work.

 2007_04_02___Pic_1___Dual_Jumper_16_Pin.jpg ( 71.94K ) Number of downloads: 39


Just a nice small envelope is all it was package in; nothing huge, but inside there were two seperately bubble wrapped dual jumpers. I did not bother to unwrap the 2nd one.

My wife called me at work when it arrived. I was very exicited, but although I told her and my kids that it was the last piece to the PJ, no one else seemed too excited.

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 3 2007, 02:38 AM

[Fulcrum]

So after dinner I headed down to the basement, and plugged the dual jumper in, and this is what I saw on my first try and only try!!!!!!!!!!!!

 2007_04_02___Pic_2___Active_Screen.jpg ( 51.96K ) Number of downloads: 55

(the wide white lines in the picture are not visible with my eyes, so it must be a camera thing)

Hurray!

I shouted loud enough for the whole family to hear (and maybe my neighbors too)...

"Yes! Yes! Yes!, It Works! It Works!!!"

To that my whole family came down to see, and the first thing my oldest daughter asked was "Daddy, can we play a game on it now?"

"Of course" I replied, "after I put the guts back into the enclosure." How about that, I have a gamer in the family, and I didn't even know it.

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 3 2007, 02:54 AM

[Fulcrum]

I might have to bring my Sony Cyber Shot camera home from work. I keep getting blurry pics.

Here is the official family picture. Veggie Tales in the background

 2007_04_02___Pic_3___Kids.jpg ( 44.57K ) Number of downloads: 30



A nice focused shot of Narnia...
 2007_04_02___Pic_5___Narnia.jpg ( 59.46K ) Number of downloads: 34

[Fulcrum]

Here are a couple pictures of StarWars...

 2007_04_02___Pic_6___Yoda.jpg ( 64.57K ) Number of downloads: 53

[Fulcrum]

 2007_04_02___Pic_7___StarWarsCity.jpg ( 73.5K ) Number of downloads: 35


BTW, the family is very pleased! The kids did not want to go to bed either!

There are a few tweaks I can see I need right off the bat:
A - The Left Hand side of the screen is not illuminated at all, I will have to move the light source or reaim to accomodate, the Right Hand side seems adequately lit.
B - There is a hot spot, though small near the center
C - My light is currently 330 mm away from the LCD screen, I would like to get it to 220 and see it that helps the brightness
D - There is a ghost image, from my mirror. It is ever so slight, and my wife could not see it while the movie was playing, but after I paused it, she did see it, but it is not very noticeable.
E - Small computer speakers just don't cut it in a big open basement... I think I'm going to have to get those big infinity speakers I purchased after I graduated from college, and take my old Kenwood system out of storage and have a little fun.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 3 2007, 02:32 AM

[Fulcrum]

The pictures are with the 2nd ViewSonic Screen, so now I'm thinking about throwing in the original screen to see if I can get it to work too, it already has the Anti Glare stripped off. If it works, then I will reassemble the 2nd screen back into a computer monitor and use it on my kid's computer, which will also be used to run the PJ.

But of course that will be after I finish tweaking the current PJ.

Can anyone guess what I'll be doing over Easter Break?

Cheers!

Fulcrum

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 3 2007, 02:45 AM

[yappypappy]

Looks great and I know how your kids must feel ,, my son keeps on asking everyday about the ffc part and whenever he sees me in garage asks if he can help and does to a point ,, I think he will be just as excited or more than me when I get mine running, what size is your screen ? I am always curious about everyones screen size , size does matter ,, ..

[Lola T70 MkIII]

Excellent work, Fulcrum - I won't be able to beat you to the finish line now!

[arizonavideo]

Looking good so far Fulcrum, Curious Gorge looked good and the kids like it, A bugs life is a winner always.

As the lamp gets more time on it it will warm up some and the slight green/blue push will change.

Now don't break it. How's the focus?

Ps I'm out of ideas of movies for the 4 and 5 year old right now. We have seen all of the Pixar and most of the good Dinsney stuff so we were watching The computer that wore tennis shoes tonight God hep us all.

If you know good clean kids movies PM me. I'm not sure if the kids are up to a divx of "300"

This post has been edited by arizonavideo: Apr 3 2007, 05:27 AM

[Natural Newbie]

Congrats!!! I'll never forget the first time I projected an image, its a great feeling. Now let the tweaking begin!

[SIMUL8R]

Woohoo....looking good Fulcrum!!

Perhaps you should enjoy some movie watching with the family for now and do the AG thing a little later. Seems they have been waiting for quite a while. Just a thought.

Was it everything you expected though?

[Lola T70 MkIII]

Was it everything you expected though?

L8R is right, you didn't tell us if you were happy or disapointed, or ecstatic but see a long tweaking road forward, etc etc. How do you feel?

Congratulations again

This post has been edited by Lola T70 MkIII: Apr 3 2007, 08:38 AM

[Fulcrum]

Looks great and I know how your kids must feel ,, my son keeps on asking everyday about the ffc part and whenever he sees me in garage asks if he can help and does to a point ,, I think he will be just as excited or more than me when I get mine running, what size is your screen ? I am always curious about everyones screen size , size does matter ,, ..

Yappypappy,

I'm not exactly sure on the size of the image, so I'll refer back to post #249 to best determine. The screen format is 16:9. The screen is listed at 100" long, but that is with borders, so the white section is approximately 96 inches (8 feet; 2.44m) across & 54 inches (4.5 feet; 1.37m) high.

However, the Narnia movie format was still more narrow than the screen. I suspect that there is another 18 inches (1.5 feet; 0.45m ) of lost space with additional blackness split between the top and bottom. The length however is the full length of 96 inches, so that puts the image at 96 inches by 36 inches or 102 inches (2.6m) diagonal.

For the Veggie Tales picture with my kids, the movie format was 4:3, with the full height of 54 inches, and a calculated width of 72 inches (1.8m) giving a diagonal of 90 inches (2.3m).

So YappyPappy, did you already order a dual-jumper? If you want I'll sell you my extra jumper for $20 Canadian. It will probably only take 3 days to get to your house from Michigan. I didn't even unwrap it yet.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

[Fulcrum]

Excellent work, Fulcrum - I won't be able to beat you to the finish line now!

I'm just glad I have an image. And Wow what an image it is!

Cheers!

Fulcrum

[Fulcrum]

Looking good so far Fulcrum, Curious Gorge looked good and the kids like it, A bugs life is a winner always.

As the lamp gets more time on it it will warm up some and the slight green/blue push will change.

Now don't break it. How's the focus?

Ps I'm out of ideas of movies for the 4 and 5 year old right now. We have seen all of the Pixar and most of the good Dinsney stuff so we were watching The computer that wore tennis shoes tonight God hep us all.

If you know good clean kids movies PM me. I'm not sure if the kids are up to a divx of "300"

A/V,

LOL, I actually though I did break the lamp yesterday. After I put the guts back into the enclosure, I turned everything on, and the lamp did not start. I was horrified, and thought the lamp broke. However, it turned out the plug was not seated well enough into the mating connection. Then after another minutes Wha La... Lights!

The focus is very good. I do notice the ghosting, but that is because of my trained eye. Also the LH side of my screen is very dark, so I can't comment on the focus in the corners on the LH side. And of course that is were all the computer screen icons are. It's also were the start button is so I had difficulties using the Start-Up menu and, I also had difficulties finding the icon to start the movies.

However before I went to bed, I worked on the light, and moved it up one inch and the illumination to the LH side of the screen improved, so there is hope that moving the light to 220 mm will help illuminate the LH side.


For the Movies, "Stuart Little" was a good one, the one with the mouse.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 3 2007, 05:01 PM

[Fulcrum]

Congrats!!! I'll never forget the first time I projected an image, its a great feeling. Now let the tweaking begin!

Thanks Natural Newbie, the feeling was exhilerating!

Cheers!

Fulcrum

[Fulcrum]

Woohoo....looking good Fulcrum!!

Perhaps you should enjoy some movie watching with the family for now and do the AG thing a little later. Seems they have been waiting for quite a while. Just a thought.

Was it everything you expected though?

Thanks for the compliment Simul8tr!

The kids were watchin Star Wars tonight, which surprised me, because they always lost interest when it was on TV, but tonight, they kept asking me about R2D2.

As far as expectations, the first night's projection was better than I anticipated, I actually thought the picture would be more grainiy, but it was beautiful.

After the kids went to bed I started some tweaking!

Cheers!

Fulcrum

[Fulcrum]

L8R is right, you didn't tell us if you were happy or disapointed, or ecstatic but see a long tweaking road forward, etc etc. How do you feel?

Congratulations again

Lola T70 MkIII,

As far as the definition, I was blown away. My wife even said "WOW" , But I did not like the dark corners.

However the tweaking I did tonight REALLY improved the lighting, Now, I'm not sure if the A/G needs to come off! The picture quality improved so much, I even got a second "WOW" from my wife tonight!

See comparison pics in my next post...

Cheers!

Fulcrum

[Fulcrum]

Last night I started up the PJ with my first image. But being inquizative, and not knowing why the top fresnel (650 FL) was needed, I left it out. That was my folly!

Tonight I decided to add the 650 FL fresnel into the PJ, and see if I could see a difference. And let me just say, that is what brought this projector up to snuff! Now the projected image has a much uniform spread of light. From corner to corner, and from edge to edge. Even with the camera, the corners look pretty good.

The only thing that became worse was the ghosting, now I see an ghost above and below the main image. Those front surface mirrors are really starting to look good.

Here are some comparison pictures:

Without 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_02___Pic_5___Narnia.jpg ( 59.46K ) Number of downloads: 29


With 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_03_Pic_1_Narnia.JPG ( 43.09K ) Number of downloads: 30


This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 4 2007, 01:45 AM

[Fulcrum]

Without 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_02___Pic_7___StarWarsCity.jpg ( 53.03K ) Number of downloads: 28


With 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_03_Pic_10_Star_Wars.jpg ( 47.04K ) Number of downloads: 25

[Fulcrum]

Without 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_02___Pic_6___Yoda.jpg ( 51.53K ) Number of downloads: 30


With 650 FL Fresnel
 2007_04_03_Pic_2___Yoda.JPG ( 51.13K ) Number of downloads: 34

[Fulcrum]

Now here are just some other pictures I took, that I thought showed the light evenness now of course these movies are the 16:9 format, so I would expect the 4:3 format to show some darker corners:

Narnia:
 2007_04_03_Pic_3_Narnia.JPG ( 44.21K ) Number of downloads: 20


 2007_04_03_Pic_4_Narnia.JPG ( 54.73K ) Number of downloads: 21


This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 4 2007, 01:55 AM

[Fulcrum]

 2007_04_03_Pic_5_Narnia.JPG ( 42.24K ) Number of downloads: 14

 2007_04_03_Pic_6_Narnia.JPG ( 45.7K ) Number of downloads: 23

[Fulcrum]

And Some "Star Wars" picts

On this first shot, you can see the ghosting above and below the lettering. I'd like to say that it is my blurry camera, but this time I think the camera got the picture right:
 2007_04_03_Pic_7_Star_Wars.JPG ( 51.05K ) Number of downloads: 33


 2007_04_03_Pic_8___Star_Wars.JPG ( 47.04K ) Number of downloads: 28

[Fulcrum]

Last but not least...

 2007_04_03_Pic_9_Star_Wars.JPG ( 55.24K ) Number of downloads: 23


This picture is BLURRY, but it shows how well distributed the light is.

Lastly, I want to say that all of the pictures shown today (including the before pictures), have the same lighting conditions, however the "before" pictures would make someone think a light is on, but there aren't any lights on for any of these pictures. It is strictly the camera having fun.

However most of the pictures from those I captured today (2007-04-03) seem about right, where the background is dark. The screen in the pictures, however, appears maybe one shade brighter than reality, but not too much brighter.

EDIT: I took another look, the pictures appear to shades brighter than reality.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

This post has been edited by Fulcrum: Apr 4 2007, 02:50 AM