Hello, I've been thinking about doing a diy projector project for a couple years now, just never got around to it ... I even have 2 15" lcds that I've stripped lying around, a 400W MH grow lamp w/ ballast, and all the lenses. I've even made a rough design in SolidWorks. But I just came across a camcorder that was broken, one of those tiny minidv camcorders, and of course, me being me took it apart and found the tiny lcd that is in the view finder ... less than an 1" wide.

I understand you would need a controller board, so I would actually have to find the datasheet to be able to use any sort of video signal. What is the smallest projector people have made themselves?

I wish school would give me a break (ALMOST there ... ).

Just did some quick searches on the the numbers that I found on the FCC, unfortunately I couldn't find anything ... I may have to back track the fcc to the main board of the camcorder to see what controls it and figure it out from there.

Took a pic just show you how tiny it is:

Click to view attachment

Some have made pjs with tiny LCD's but 2 things to consider are how bad the screen-door effect will be. Its not likley you will come up with a watchable projection bigger then 40-50"... and even thats gonna be pretty rough.

The other thing is your gonna be hard pressed to find a controller.... it will be much easier to find a controller for either of the 15" LCDs you have.

If you really want to do a mini-pj with the LCD your probly better off just to extend the FFC and use the camcorder itself for the controller, if it has some kind of AV input capabilities.

While some have stated its hard to cool the LCD, you could just pop that LCD int a slide projector with some tweaking, and be good to go.

I have the controller boards for the 15" lcds. I just have an obsession with small technologies. For example, just before UMPCs started to come out I wanted to build a mini windows based tablet pc that would look like an etch-a-sketch (I thought it was clever at the time), an industrial computer (P3 800 about the size of a pci card) and a 8.4" touchscreen. I went as far as getting the knobs on the etch-a-sketch attached to the shaft encoders on a wheel mouse via a belt drive type design. I also hacked together a spring mechanism so that you could press down on the buttons and it would click. I would joke with my friends that UMPCs were pretty much pointless, and that I needed to get the etch-a-sketch done and released on the net to poke fun at UMPCs. I still plan to go about finishing that sometime ... the lcds got shipped to my sister and she can't find them so I pretty sure they're lost. 8.4" lcds are hard to come by for under a hundred bucks. I will have to allocate some savings for that ...

I usually go half way into a project then get sidetracked ... which happened with my etch-a-sketch computer that I was planning to build and the 15" pre-projector that have been gathering dust for quite a while. I am currently studying electronics/electrical engineering (they now tell me its most similar to systems engineering, it's a new type of degree in which theory is applied directly to projects), and have been doing a bit of research on lcds and signaling and all that in my free time (or when I am suppose to be studying for other things). The whole thing that got me started on it was the fact that a QXGA projector (about a year or so ago) cost 200 000 where a panel from IDTECH could do QXGA dithered. I actually wanted to try to figure out how to make a controller board for that lcd so that I could make a QXGA projector. I'm almost at that point actually. We have started learning how to use FPGAs and by programming one of those it is possible to make the timing/signaling to translate video signals into the LVDS transmitters (I believe the datasheet that I was looking at recommended 2 ICs from Texas Instruments). I have to put the QXGA idea on hold. By the time I begin there will probably be an off the shelf solution to that, they just need to go one more step up the resolution standards. However I did see something about a Vampower card. Did not look too deep into that however.

I got sidetracked. Anyways, my idea for that mini lcd was something along the lines of a projector smaller than the palm sized ones that are out on display by Sony and the like. I had this: http://www.olc-inc.com/Worlds_Smallest_crossflow.htm in mind. Pretty cool, you can even pay via paypal (instead of paying for 10 000 via bank wire) for those from what I can tell.

But I first need to find a datasheet. Very little chance of finding something I know, even with a data sheet this would take months of concentrated effort. I just like to gather information.

My "big" ideas are usually too big for me to finish them

You can find these lcd's here: http://www.kopin.com/commercial-display-products/

I like the idea, I would like to see how it turns out, best of luck!

You can use the controller board from the camcorder to run the LCD, and input the video through the camcorder video input. It will accept video input if the camcorder had analog to digital pass-through used for connecting to a VCR or other analog video source and recording it on digital media in the camcorder.

If you are looking for really small, use a red laser pointer and green laser pointer for light sources (gonna take a little imagination to come up with a blue light source). Regular lenses from surplusshed or anchor optics will work just fine as beam spreaders and collimators. Remember that laser pointers are usually linearly polarized, so rotate the barrel of the laser to get the polarization lined up with the polarization of the LCD to get the most light through. When the polarization is lined up, light transmission through the LCD is boosted to 60% to 80%. Too cool.

Have fun with it.

Tgreenwood

Thanks for the input and information.

tgreenwood - I never thought of that. Unfortunately I will have to use another camcorder for that idea. This one didn't power on at all, I'm thinking that it will be too time consuming to try to find the fault. I suppose I could do a relatively quick check on the power coming in, but once it gets to the mainboard ...

The minidv camcorders are pretty cheap on eBay when they're broken. Might actually be the cheapest way to get these tiny lcds. It seems like a pretty common problem for the tape mechanism to jam. It doesn't really help either when the people use screw drivers to pry their tapes out But that is a good thing for us. Half the time the only thing wrong with them is the tape mechanism.

It might actually be possible to beat Sony's current record for smallest projector. Image quality ... 320 x 240 seems pretty good tho for being half the size of a stamp. Overall size of the whole thing ... with the size of the camcorder mainboard, it might be pretty close to the Sony one. I will have to look into the Luxeon (sp?) LEDs for the lighting. Lasers are a good idea, but may be out of my price range. I could make a really red image with the bunch of cd players and crap I've got around but I've been spending too much lately.

I usually try to go about a project by looking at how easy it is to get the items, which translates to cheap costs and easy to reproduce. This might be good for that ... a broken minidv camcorder goes for about 40US on eBay nowadays ... which is pretty good considering a new one costs <250US. I happened to get a few in multiple states of working. Was planning on getting rid of them through eBay just so that I could feel better about my constantly decreasing bank account and I might even get my money back.

elektron thanks for the link. I recognize the site name, I believe I came across it a few months ago and it got lost in my unsorted bookmarks before my last reformat on this machine. No time to look too much at it though. Last week of school before my spring co-op term ... and I have to hunt for a job too ...

I can't wait until the school stuff is all cleared. Then I can dive into the projects I have on the go.

Well, you can get a red laser pointer for five bucks, and a green laser pointer can be had for 25 dollars on Ebay. Maybe a blue LED flashlight would work for the blue component?

Tgreenwood

Hmm ... I did see that blue lazers are becoming more available, however they seem to be expensive. What seems interesting about the lazers is that they allow a very bright beam of light to travel large distances allowing for the light source to be farther away from the image display (without too much loss) ... however that is the extent of my knowledge about them . My guess is that a different lense would be needed to unfocus the beam so that it is more evenly dispersed over the lcd? I came across an article today about lazer backlighting systems and it seems like prototype micro projectors exist.

http://www.videsignline.com/howto/displayt...ology/196604030

Still trying to wrap my head around some of this stuff, but the "Nescel" arrays seem pretty interesting. Has anyone managed to make a laser backlighting system diy style? Unfortunately these Nescel arrays seem pretty bleeding edge ... makes it harder and more expensive to buy a small number. I will have to do some more reading ...