Alright here it goes... I hope i have read enough to get this thing going. Word to the wise: if you mention this project to your girlfriend too much and she gets mad, DO NOT tell her, "i'm sorry it's all i can think about".

Received the lenses from Brain today

Parts (everything is on the way)

Slusher's Enclosure (definitely saved myself some anger fits with this purchase)
Refurb. Samsung 153T (350:1, 25ms, DVI) (210$ with shipping, ebay)
Standard Lumenlab lenses
M135 Ballast, Venture and Norpro from Lighting Unlimited
Arctic 120v Fan


Once everything arrives within a couple of weeks and I'm ready to go i will post pics.

Wish me luck, i'll need it.

First update. Received the monitor... 1 dead pixel, red. Tried massaging it and now i have 1 red and 1 blue pixel! >:(
Oh well...

I got the venture and m135 to work! damn is that thing bright! After a couple of minutes it felt like daytime.

I have almost everything except for Slusher's enclosure. Received my Arctic 120v fan, it is LOUD! Very exciting night otherwise.

first pics of the venture in action.. All light provided by the bulb. If this pic doesn't work forgive me.

Dude, how do you sleep with your bed on the wall like that?



geez I crack myself up...

It looked straight when i came home from the bar!

Update:

Wired the M135 ballast and switches, it's nice not having to unplug it when you want to turn it off.

Stripped the Samsung 153T, i dont have my box from Slusher yet but it will be here in a week. I know it's early but once i got started i couldn't stop.

I will post pics of the strip down tomorrow evening. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but what do i know, i never stripped an LCD before. I plugged it back in to make sure i didn't break anything and it was working, whew! I thought for sure i was gonna break it.

More tomorrow.

Alright here is a crappy tutorial on how to strip a Samsung 153t. Forgive the quality of the pics. All in all not too bad. One FFC and it is long enough and seems to be tougher than some of the thin ffc's i've seen on the board. May not be an ffc at all.

Step 1: Take off the stand by removing the four screws.

then you have the above ^

Step 2: Hardest part as far as i was concerned, take a screwdriver and gently pry up around the edges. this took the longest out of everything.

After the cover is off you can see all the screws that hold it together. Unplug the power switch.

You can see the two gold/brass screws about 2-3" to the left and right of the switch, remove them and the identical two on the other side (not pictured).

Remove these little bracket things and look for any more screws holding the backplate on.

Crap. An ffc or ribbon cable. I couldnt unplug it so i simply flipped the whole backplate backwards to lay flat. First however remove the control board with buttons from the bottom front of the panels case. Later, i used tin snips to cut the metal surrounding the cable in this pic because i didnt wanna force it.

You can just pop the control board out from the edges with a screwdriver. I then flipped everything over to see what i was working with.

Not bad. No FFC's. Unscrew the boards from the backing plate.

Unplug the backlight cables (two sets) from their connections on either side of the monitor. You can see one set on the left-hand side of the previous picture. Next remove the backlight by unclipping the white clips that hold it to the silver frame and the slide it away from the silver piece that is connected to the white cables. (contains the edge connections (be careful).
You know have this. and can see the edge connectors, there are also three on the side (left if you were looking at it from the front. The three are not connected to anything but are very delicate.

To disconnect the boards from the backing plate make sure to unbolt the vga and dvi screw thingies. My socket wrench is taking one out in this pic. If all the screws are out the boards will come off easily.

Whoops here is the pic.

And that is it! Check out that spread. I tested it out today and it was still working. I managed to make a 90 degree andgle with the edge connectors with no ill effects.

Next update will be in a week when Slusher's enclosure gets here. I hope to have everything finished by Sunday. (EAGLES! although i dont have a tv box yet)

Awesome, Good luck! Don't rush it, though. Take you time, you'll be kicking yourself if you hurt you panel by rushing ... (believe me, I know...)

Still waiting on the box (UPS says it will be here tomorrow) so here is a somewhat not exciting update.

This is a pic of the metal frame the boards were mounted to. I primed it and put on two coats of Krylon Ultra Flat Black spray paint. I hope to put the two main boards back in there spots and then screw it to the bottom of the projector, it just so happens to be the perfect height to allow the front fresnel to swing freely. This should give the inside a pretty clean look and not make me nervous if i have to disconnect the dvi, vga or power cable.

I came up with an idea for the front fresnel to swing freely and "auto keystone" as well as to adjust horizontally. I am somewhat of a guitar player and happened to have a few extra tuners laying around from another project (epiphone les paul, got bored of it). I made a little bracket to hold the tuner.

There is a little hole to put a string through...

On the other end of the guitar string is the ball thingy that prevents it from being pulled through.

Now imagine that the two coffee stirrers i snatched from work were glued to the very top of the front fresnel. Insert the guitar string through the stirrers and the fresnel will sing effortlessly.

I wll cut a slit on either side of the box to allow the string to slide forward and backwards. THe back of the block holding the tuner (and block holding the "ball") will be coated in felt to allow no light to pass through. The tension from the string will be enough to keep the string taught and straight. If i need to make an adjustment, just loosen the tuner. Maybe not the easiest way but perhaps i could make a Gibson/Marshall projector???

Update for the night. Box is here! I cut the holes for the switches and power, rigged up the preliminary lighting and fan. Tomorrow i will start with the fresnels and lcd and i hope to have it finished by saturday. here are a couple of pics. Slusher's box is really nice by the way.

inside

Switches, straight enough...

Another update, almost there!
Here is a pic of the keystoning mechanism.

Other side. UNderneath is a slit about 1 1/2 inches.

Hopefully screen shots coming tomorrow

IT is almost finished! I still need to cut a hole for the controls and mount the boards, for some reason the picture won't upload. Still waiting on the reflector but preliminary tests look damn good!

Finally a couple of pics. I can't seem to get my camera to take a good shot but i'm working on it. My laptop is dead but here are a couple of xbox shots. they look better in person and i am still operation sans reflector.

Another, camera blurs for no reason.

I still need to build my screen, right now the ripples in the shot are because the blackout is just hanging there. The avermedia tv box 9 works great by the way. Even regular tv looks pretty good. The xbox shots came through s-video still need to try out the component.

WOOT! Love the Halo shot . Definitely go with the component on the XBOX. Mine actually came with the high def pack so I was good to go but before I bought my XBox I bought some component to use with my friends Xbox, I'll sell you those if you like.

just wondering do you get any ghost at all with a reponse time of 25ms as i've seen a few lcd screen with that spec and they are pretty cheap. I dont fancy paying out load on a screen just yet so was wondering does it Ghost and is the contrast any good? it being only 350:1.

Jeremy, how much would you want for the component pack? How big of a difference have you noticed? S-video looks good but the text and outlines could be sharper.

Pablo,
I havent noticed any ghosting with the high 25ms response time. I'd say it looks pretty darn good. When i get it hooked up with component i'll let you know if anything changes. I plan on making another pj when i get a real job out of school. That way i can justify buying a 19" panel.

As far as contrast goes. I havent really noticed it too much. I still don't have my reflector installed and at times it looks a little dark but overall i'd say it's fine. I wanted to get one built and after spending too much time looking on ebay i just decided to go for it.

yeh its starting to get that stage with me just wanna build it, bought my reflector today went down to my local ikea cost me £4.00 not bad really
cheers for your help and do keep us updated

Here is a dvd clip. I really need to make my screen and see what everything looks like when it's flat.

Avermedia is cool! Halo PIP in my computer?...

Cool keystone mechanism, I'll be borrowing that if you don't mind.

What did you glue the coffee stirrers on with a pic would be nice... cheers

BTW love the guitar tuner idea...... great

I changed the coffee stirrer idea and am now using alligator clips since I got the updated fresnels. Here are some pics didn't come out as well as I liked but it's the camera!

The pics are from windows media hd. They are in"720p" but scaled down. I can't play them at all though because my laptop can't handle it.

Pretty girl. Pretty BIG girl. About 4 feet or so high. zoomed in a little from the last one. But you get the idea on scale. Pics are low res.