Alright so i fallowed electrodacus thread and was very inspired by his results. Not thinking i ordered a sharp xr10-x, it was only 100$ with a dead lamp and had nice specs. What i found out when i got it was, DLP doesnt seem to use light the same way and would be WAY more picky.
So i tried to brute force the souel p7 which was recommended in electrodacus' thread. No results, then i remembered the old 150w metal halide i ordered a few years ago that i barely touched.
Click to view attachment

It would be to big the way it was so i decided to break the crap out of it.
Click to view attachment

I threw it out a window onto some pavement not knowing what to expect, because everyone talked about how easy these things blow up and to be super careful.. well i broke just how i wanted it to.
Still with the base it wouldnt seem to fit right so i cut out the element inside and rigged that into the stock reflector.
Click to view attachment
which actually gave me decent results, but i didnt like how long it took to warm up and it finally ended up dying or maybe it was the ballast that died.. either way i wanted LED usage anyway so it was a good thing.

Please use the P7 LED metal halide are dangerous to work with and you need to use some lenses with the P7 the reflector will not work.

here is a result shot on my ceiling during the day.. not to bad.
Click to view attachment

But once it blew up i knew it was time to dig deeper, so i took the whole entire projector apart. I found what i could strip down and move around while keeping it working. I jumped the lamp sensor, and the lamp door sensors so it would stay running for the most part regardless of what i do to it. I took the dlp/optic enclosure apart and studied how it worked. The light goes through the colorwheel first (which was located in the lamp bay) then through a small square mirror rectangle. The rectangle was housed in a plastic cylinder with 2 lenses after it. Those shot the light into the dlp boxy type area, reflected on a mirror (which was attached to the top of the box that came off), bounced of into a thick lens in the middle, onto the dlp surface which must have a reflective backing. It shot off there and finally into the main projection lens setup.



now now let me finish, haha.

after playing with the led and projector for a while i realized it needed such a small point light source, the square opening beind the color wheel was tiny. So once i got it all apart i realized the cylinder holding the 2 lens' and mirror rectangle opening was removable, i played with it for a while, and held the led up to the small square opening. It projected a decent brightness rectangle box on the wall.. But there was so much lost light i wouldnt settle. I took the cylinder apart and cut off the end with the box opening hoping that the lenses would take in more light. It did infact work but now projected a messy blobby circle on the wall, but was somewhat brighter. I removed the color wheel and put the cylinder with lenses back in, then fired it up and held the led right infront of the first lens. It projected a decent brightness black and white greyscale image. Now what, where will i get the color? I knew i had to try to relocate the color wheel.
Was this even possible? I unscrewed it and jammed it in right infront of the dlp chip between that and the projection lens. Thank god this projector is a tank because im such a newb and not real gentle. I dropped it a couple times off the desk while it was open, spilling all the delicate insides.. and it still works.
Alright with the color wheel in its new resting place i tried again, by the way to do this i had to unscrew the mirror which was attached to the top of the dlp/lens encloser and set it in place. Well now it worked, i had some really promising results.
Click to view attachment
with lights on
Click to view attachment
with lights off, VERY promising for one led.. but still not quite as good as id like it. This was from just holding the led in place, i will take more/better pics but was happy and wanted to start tracking my progress. I did do some dumb dangerous stuff, so i dont recommend experimenting like i did for anyone. But now im playin safe with an led.. altho somtimes super hot and hard to hold on to. Any suggestions? Im thinking about trying a stronger led or an array of 2-3 maybe red green and this p7? But the light has to go into a small spot still, about the size of a dime but way bigger than before. Anyone have any suggestions on leds or arrays of leds? and ways to gather the light? I will post way more pics later, just wanted to share my results and get some dlp users in on the LED action.

OK I will wait you need a big heatsink for your LED the size of a CPU heatsink and in order to have 10 to 40x more light out of your projector you need to use a lens or two in front of you LED the best lenses are the one with big diameter and small FL .

I ordered a lens for a different led, that was supposed to bring the viewing angle down to 8 degrees, but it really doesnt help, the 2 lenses that were stock behind the color wheel seem to do a damn good job when brute forced with just the led right in front, I put the mirror back in place by cutting part of the lid away, and the results were sooooo much better. I projected on to my ceiling at about 3 feet diag and it was very nice, plus im only running the led at about 2 amps so once i get a circuit done up to run it at full brightness it should work just fine alone, especially for what im going to be using the projector for (diy multi touch table). Here are some pics.
Click to view attachment

Here is another pic, sorry the quality is shit, i have to mess with my camera settings, plus my brother can be a douche bag sometimes, i asked him to put his hand up to show the size of the projected image. haha.
So far im very please, the mirror being in the right spot has made a huge difference and like i said once i run this led at full power it should produce perfect results, now i have to find a HUGE heatsink and mount it in place some how. Im also thinkin about upgrading to a 1100 lumen led, or trying to find one slightly more powerful. But so far im very happy with the results, keep in mind this was on a painted wall and would look way better on a proper screen.
Click to view attachment

Lock's good and I don't think 1100 lumen will be more powerful and will take double the power (if is Osram ) so you will need double the heatsink.
Can you make a photo with the projector internal optics next time I will like to see how it looks. Maybe you are right about the use of lenses for LED but I'm not sure since all my projectors are LCD or LcOS and on all projector I have the first element is integrator lens.

OK I found this


and it seams that you need the light to converge to one point when reaching the color wheel and then spreed to the lenses so you will need a lens in front of the LED but used in a different way.

wow this is ridiculous how do you delete multiple posts, im very annoyed... and my damn pictured didnt even show up. Not to slam these boards because ive learned alot but is it always this bad? I know its my fault for pushing the button more than once but damn i guess i just get impatient. As for the picture i dont think thats my fault and how the hell do you delete?

Here is the inside, im holding the mirror that refracts from the lens after the led.. at the bottom is the repositioned color wheel which is sitting snugly between the DLP chip and a piece of metal, id take it out but its perfect and id rather not mess with it. Altho it was easy as hell to get in place and i havent noticed any color problems with it being in a new location which is weird. I thought it was all such a precise science. But now i have one set back, after a few minutes the projector flashes a temp symbol in the bottom left corner then shuts down.. I think i removed a sensor for the lamp area housing and bridged it with some solder. It allowed the projector to power on but i didnt realize it would have adverse effects longer term, kinda weird but this is the only thing i can think of that would cause it. Now i cant find the damn sensor, i hope i didnt throw it away, i guess i got to cocky. Anyone have any ideas of what to do or if it could be something else? Im sure i will find a way to get around it.


Click to view attachment

This helped me but I do not see where was the original position of color wheel

wow how the hell do you find stuff like that, i couldnt find much on my projector. The color wheel was originally in the lamp bay about a quarter inch from the tiny square light intake whole. So it went, directly from stock lamp through color wheel, then through mirror rectangle boxy thing, then 2 lenses bounced off the mirror, through another fat lens off the dlp chip and out the optics.

I think they did this wrong, they could have had way better usage of light if they put the color wheel where its at, i mean obviously. like i said i tried brute forcing it with the led and stock setup, with no results, then moved the color wheel and it made a huge difference. Good luck to everyone else trying dlp its kind of a bitch, but hopefully this helps everyone out.

Electrodacus is correct in saying a DLP requires a converging light source.
An LCD generally uses a collimated (parallel) beam which passes through a polarizing recycler and integrator. The integrator and recycler are combined into one unit. The recycler converts most of the light into one polarisation plane so that it will pass though the LCDs. The integrator evens the light distribution.
A DLP requires a converging light source so that it can converge down to pass through a light pipe. The DLP doesn’t use polarised light so a recycler isn’t necessary. The light pipe serves the same purpose as the integrator in the LCD, to even the light.

DJ

yes i can confirm this, i assume the small mirror boxy thing was the light pipe, and i noticed it made a nice square/rectangle out of the light source... BUT it was also at the cost of light. I took this out of the equation and cut that part of completely, then i put the LED directly up to the smaller lens that was next in line and well honestly im super happy with the results. I just cut away at more plastic infront of this lens and i think it did help collect some light. I will be looking for a huge heatsink and making a holder for the whole light set up tomorrow. I will post pics and let you all know how it goes.

You are quite funny ... I think that the original position of the color wheel was not bad and you need to use a lens between LED and color wheel the light need to bee very narrow when it reach the color wheel similar with the first photo . My idea is that if the light is not narrow less than 1mm diameter then the sensor will receive light with 2 colors at the same time and will mix the color probably not to much.
Sorry about the temperature sensor usually they have some Kohm even 100Kohm so maybe is better to use a resistor 47Kohm one or 2 but I do not now if it works.

You are right I did not bother my self with DLP up to now and seems to have a lot of differences .
And my English is not so good so I did not found this words in my vocabulary ( converging and diverging )

The reason it reduced your light was that the LED has a diverging beam which means that most of its light simply didn’t enter the pipe.

Click to view attachment

The use of lenses could be adapted to a DLP. Electrodacus used lenses to collimate the light prior to entering the integrator of his LCD projector. Lenses could be placed in front of the LED to converge the light prior to entering the light pipe.

DJ

I think it has to do with the recent server explosion. So no it’s not a regular thing. Only moderators can delete posts.

This is true but for me the problem was the light pipe was so little it hardly accepted much light. I dont understand why the designed it like this, but i was actually thinking of trying to make a bigger that i could actually fit the whole led in. So far i think the progress has been great tho. And i knew the light pipe wassnt accepting much light which is why i just did away with it.

also on the site that electrodacus linked to they seem to advertise the led i bought (p7 bare) as 700 lumens and the p7 chipped at 900 lumens. Should i buy the other one is it actually brighter, or is it the same thing?

One thing that i think will bring it to its full potential is getting the correct driver, right now im using 3 ac adapters i had laying around from random electronics, i swear i just collect this shit for times like these, the specs are as fallows
3v .5amps
4.5v .5amps
3.6v 1.2amps

I ran them in parallel so the highest the voltage is is 4.5v and the amps total 2.2 correct? Is it being ran at its full potential because of the higher volts? I doubt it, i think if i ran it at 3.6ish volts and 2.8-9 amps it would be perfect.

Now im just rambling, let me know what you think, hopefully im not too misguided. I know i dont know all the terms but most of this is common sense right?
This project excites me and like i said i think its bright enough for the multi touch table i wanna make so in my eyes ive made it. oh well then theres that whole heat warning issue, haha. Any ideas on that?

The angle that enters the pipe is roughly the angle that leaves the pipe. Although placing the LED inside the light pipe would force it to pass more of the light to the other side it isn’t addressing the problem that the LED beam angle isn’t correct for the rest of the optics. So placing the LED inside the pipe means that the rays leaving will be the same as the rays from the LED. In other words, the pipe is not doing anything but hindering you. This is true only when using the LED with no other optics before entering the pipe. If you were to re-shape the beam using a pair of PCX lenses the total light through the projector should increase. Something like this:

Click to view attachment

This is actually a mini version of a DIY projector with the light pipe being the triplet lens. There should be no reason why this wouldn’t work. One of the biggest hurdles for projector design is the size of the arc, or in this instance the size of the LED. The same magnification rules can be applied to the PCX lenses as they are applied to DIY fresnel lenses. If you were to find that the you couldn’t get the light after the two PCX lenses to fit into the light pipe, simply make the rear focal length larger than the front focal length. This should shrink the LED image at the light pipe.

Dazzz is right this is exactly what will work for you.
About the LED yes the first time Dealextreme sold the LED was the 700 lumen version and now they say they have the 900 lumen but you will end frying the LED if you don't use a current limitation for it and also a heatsink some example will bee this 5V2Apowersupply and two of this in parallel 1400mA. they have only 10pcs and you need only 2 so I fond kaidomain is selling only 2 already connected in parallel 2800mA

Well i think im gonna skip the light tunnel for now considering im happy with my results. But now i need to find a heat sink, ive seen a couple cpu heatsinks on ebay that might work but i also saw this http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12193 That hardly seems suitable, but its super cheap, is that really good enough? Also like i said i have the bare p7, so i take it this is the 700lumen version? For some reason i thought it was 900, if this is the case i will more than likely reorder the 900 version and try to use both, what do you think? When i order the 900 version id like to get a heatsink, driver and anything else that will optomize the performance.

The heatsink you made a link to is only a small heatsink to be easier to glue to a bigger heatsink for 10W passive cooling you need a CPU heatsink this will be fine and for LED SSC P7 with heatsink base will be fine is at the same price as the bare LED for power supply use one or two of this 5V2A-120V I belive one will be enough even if is 2A it will provide 2.8A and probably the voltage will drop to 4.5V witch is no problem for this driver 1400mA LED driver but you need two of this connected in parallel for one LED and they sell a pack of 10 or you can find this already connected two in parallel 2800mA from Kaidomain .

Hey all, lots of discussion here the past few days!

I bought a DLP from smashed_99cbr (which is still going strong with the included bulb, probably at 3-400 hrs now). He informed me that the bulbs havent lasted longer than 1000 hours for him, so I have to be ready with an LED setup!

Its a Toshiba TDP-S20. So far, I've figured out how to bypass the ballast, so the projector will think the bulb is lit. That needed to be done while I still have a working bulb so I could see what signal changed when it was lit I haven't thought about the exact LED setup yet, but I have some leftover precons that I might try using to concentrate the LED light.

If you can read german, there are some great shots inside of a Toshiba LED-DLP (TDP-FF1): www.diy-community.de

Anyway, to the useful part of my post: Pictures!
Parts
DMD
Colorwheel-Light Tunnel
Mirror-White
Mirror-Green
Mirror-Red
Mirror-Between Red and Blue
Mirror-Blue
From DMD Position
Assembly Wide Shot
Colorwheel
Colorwheel Closeup
Thru Light Tunnel
Light Tunnel Again
Projection Lens

Hope this helps!

Thanks so much for the links. Youve been a big help, i like the heatsink especially for the price, i will buy that. But the power still seems a bit fuzzy to me. I know i need it to be 4v 2.8a. But id like to get it from 120v house outlet and to use those chips id need an in between drop down adapter to 3-4v 2.8a or higher.. sooo are you sure the adapter you linked to actually can output more than 2a? Because .8 would be a great loss in my eyes as far as lumens go.

the spec for the circuit on 1400mA driver it have 4 of this each with 350mA aprox LINK and a link to some test done LINK2 so it seams it work from 2.7 to 6V and 5V is OK .
When I was talking about 4.5V from the 5V2A power supply I was considering that the voltage will drop from 5V to approx 4.5V if you draw more current as 2.8A.
Also about the 1400mA led driver it have a input voltage and an output voltage at input voltage you connect the the power supply 5V2A and at the output you connect the LED the voltage on output depends on LED so you do not care the only important output parameter is current and this need to be about 2.8A.
My English really suck so I hope you will understand what I just tried to explain .

Yeah it made sense mostly but i think i knew all of that, the only thing i dont understand is.. if the adapter is rated at 5v, 2a.. will it actually be able to put out 2.8a? I thought 2 was the max? I want 2.8 or as close as possible. Right now i think im getting about 2 with my home made ghetto setup.

I have a similar 5V2A power supply and I can get even 3.8A but I don't now how low the voltage will drop.

Awesome! Thats really all I needed was some actual tested confirmation that it will run the LED at full speed. Now im not sure if you ever answered this but do you think the LED (bare) that i bought is 700 lumens, because if it is then i will most likely order the chipped 900 lumen version. I also plan on experimenting with different screen material to really make it pop. I cant wait. Once i have the correct driver, heatsink and screen, i will post some more results and maybe a new cleaned up thread.

ahhhh god damnit i guess i answered my own question! I ordered this from mouser, http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail...6v7C17PnA%3d%3d

Its the f'n 700 lumen version and it cost me 39ish dollars shipped! ARG... so tonight before bed im going to reorder the significantly cheaper 900 lumen version, heatsink and some driver boards. Once i get it i will try to use it alone then play with both just to see what i get, because for some reason i get a great out put when i slightly tilt this led so maybe if i slightly tilt two.. just thinking. We will see in time. I guess this discovery was bitter sweet, the bitter part i over paid for a lower intensity model.. the sweet ass part. I will be getting 200 more lumens which is pretty damn big for the results im already getting.

I don't now if is 700 lumen or not but I only have a total of 650lumen from all LED and the main spot from the lens is 450lumens the output is 23lumen from the projector but you can see in this two video one during the day and one at night on a 2 meter diagonal projection Link to video

Today it tested for a min with some black out cloth, there was slight ambient day light as the sun was going down.. The results so far from what i saw were that the material was indeed slightly brighter and way more acurate (white) than the wall. I also bought a few different types of spray paint, metallic, grey, gloss white, etc.. I will section off parts of the cloth and do comparisons. I really cant wait for my whole setup to get here so i can assemble a lighting mechanism (heatsink, led (or 2), and power supply). Once its all done i have a feeling the results will be amazing. Ive been hoping for this for years since i started dabbling in diy projectors over at diyaudio. So many people have tried and failed, and i myself have vested a good amount of time and money only to give up. Im glad advancements have finally been made in the DIY led projector frontier. So kudos to electrodacus for all the great breakthrus, hard work, and motivation. Its kind of addicting, im half tempted to buy some more projectors to do this to, damn a light source thats cheap to run and last almost forever..

I will post some more results soon, either later tonight or once i get the whole set up in place. I have a feeling i will want to mess with this all night tho. Now the only thing i have to try to work on is the heat warning thing. I wish i could find that damn part i took off.

Thanks ...

About the heat warning use a 100Kohm resistor or more not a shunt it may work.
Have fun tonight.

Thanks! So far ive had a ton of fun tonight, the results were better than i realized but of course still need some tweaking and once i get the new led they should be even better. I actually found the sensor while digging around in the bin of junk that came from my project.. unfortunatly when i soldered the connector it made it harder for me to reconnect the stock part.. but i rigged it back on and its running now with no problems, im ecstatic. Also so far the results are just the plain black out cloth as the winner, the silver does give a brighter image but also is very spotty and sensitive to any abnormality, even slight, in the cloth. The cloth alone is a great choice tho. None of the paints really did anything for me. So im going to just make it out of blackout cloth and a frame then paint the frame black.

I took a couple pics, they are okay but for some reason my cam sucks. When i get some more worth posting i will.

hey, LEDguy24
Any updates with your DLP XGA projector ?

why not do this ?

how did you bypass the ballast or lamp detector for the xr10s

hey,

i got an Acer PD112 DLP 800x600 projector last week without lamp and until i find a new one i also try to do a LED Mod because i already have one Cree R2 from dealextreme.

today i did first experiments and my conclusion is, that the most important point by modding DLP is to concentrate the light point to 5mm because the gateway after the colourwheel is only ~5mm.

i'm going to try a concentrator lens from polymer optics but i can't find a shop who sells it.

tomorrow i'm going to up you a few pics from a member of my german "home community" diy-communtiy.de, he did a DLP LED Mod with Cree MC-E

Id like to see the pics of the modded DLP

cheers

My first LED projector is going strong on a 100" Da-lite high power screen but its LCD

I am hunting down a DLP test subject with 1024x768+ res, most likely 720p! Going to be using one of the luminus LEDs. We will see. I am wondering how I could measure and replicate the colour wheel using the 3 different colored emitters.

DLPs are a lot more sensitive to stray light, so you really want to keep the light source the way that it is.

Placing the LED inside the light pipe will increase the light transmission through the pipe, but at a cost of having a wider beam dispersal, which will do bad things.

The DLP chip basically has thousands of tiny mirrors which change in angle slightly to reflect the light from the light engine differently, thus giving it different values from full on to full off. If you have a wider dispersion of light hitting the DLP chip, then it's going to tend to be full-on more than it should be. You'll probably find that contrast suffers, so instead of having a smooth transition from black to white, the black would ramp up to white (Or whatever colour) way too quickly, and you'd lose most of your contrast. Actually, I picture the effect as being similar to if you forced the picture into an old 16-colour pallette, or maybe even 8 colour.

There's a REASON why the lamp is that distance from the light tube. They could get more lumens with the standard DLP if they just put hte lamp closer, or eliminated the tube altogether and just shone it on the DLP chip, but they didn't do that. They used the light tube to restrict the light hitting the DLP chip, so that only light within a certain angle would be used. This wasn't done to frustrate DIYers, it was done because that's the way that the DLP chip operates.

The good news though is that at least they didn't make it so that only their lamp could possibly put out hte correct beam pattern, since hte body of hte projector restricts and shapes the lamp pattern.