Hi evryone. After a long discussion about how much the cheapo projectors suck from ebay. I have decided to take on a challenge and build one myself, to see if maybe, a (close to) full hd picture is possible for Fifteen Dollars.
Here is what I needed to get started.
Magnifying sheet $8.00-Office max (good quality btw. surprisingly thick acrylics unlike ebay's)
8 Pizza boxes FREE- just had to ask some kids working at the nearest pizza joint (x-larges)
1 roll of duct tape $3.00 K-Mart (man that place smells like B-O)
2 cans flat black off brand spray 3.50-K-Mart
1 Flat screen 15" CRT monitor-we got it for free from my business surplus.

After that we were off to a decent start. Me and my bro got home and got out some scissors and a ruler.

STEP 1:
We measured the length and the width of the crt

STEP 2:
We lined up half the boxes and cut them all based on the width and height of the screen by 18 " long. (1 box per side)

STEP 3:
We cut the other half of the boxes the same as thr others except we made them a 1/4 " shorter on each side, but still 18" long.

STEP 4:
We took the boxes we just cut and headed outside to spray them with the paint we recently acquired.
this step was a little troublesome because the outsides of the box were flat and white with pictures of the round-table knight on the front. so when we went to paint it with our cheap two cans of paint. It would soak through, leaving it kind of splotchy and ashy grey colored instead of black. We knew we would run out of paint and I really didn't want to go back to town, so we decided to color the smaller box (that fit inside of the larger one) first, since the inner box is most of the light tunnel. So we got done with the smaller ones with a little bit of paint left in our cans, so we decided to paint the bottom 1/4th of the outermost boxes.

STEP 5:
We took the Boxes in after a cigggarette and a beer (to let the paint dry), and stated to work on Taping it together. First we made sure not to have any tape on the inside of any part of the light tunnel that was gonna be used, so we taped the spines of the outsides of the two boxes together. And since we knew that one would slide into the other, we re-inforced the inside top corners of the outer box.

STEP 6:
After the boxes were taped we had to create a cardboard frame out of (guess what material) JK.
So we measured the width and the height of the crt monitor one more time, then we cut a square to match it's lengths. THen we put our fresnal on the cardboard frame and outlined it with a bic pen. then we inset the outline 1/4" so we could have something to tape the fresnal to. after taping it to the frame. you need to tape it to your smaller, inner box. we did this by taping flaps to the middle of the sides of the fresnal frame, and then taping the flaps to the outside of the box.
STEP 7: We were really sick of working on this thing so we took a breather and headed outside.

The fresnal frame and... SKATE SPOT!

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...3648&st=222

found this for you.look at post 239

Interesting thats the same thing the other guy did with the crt (no fresnal, he just wrapped cardboard around a magnifying glass). Just a quick update I finished assembling the box but there was only like four feet between the wall and the projector and my sliding mechanism was too long to get it to focus. so i took the fresnal out of the box and held it up and was ble to see a pretty clear image of my desktop on the projector material we loosely hung from the ceiling. it was interesting to say the least. more to come and ill take pics of my enclosure when i get home. I wonder if i take the lens off my ohp if i get a better projection? it's not a triplet but it might be better than a single fresnal

I read somewhere about how crappy trhese projectors were, but then i heard someone back it up saying you Can have a really good projection if youy break inside your monitor and overclock the brightness somehow, which leads me to my next question, How do you hack your brightness in a crt monitor, any ideas? has anyone heard of this?

I've heard that opening up a CRT is very dangerous as the electrical components could give you the shock of your life.

I know and i dont care. ill wear insulated gloves and leave it unplugged for fourty eight hours, and test evrything befor ei touch it with a multi meter. my dad works for Puget sound energy so im confident i have my bases covered, i just dont know what to adjust. does anyone know where i could find information on this? i tried googling it but that just confused me more . Thanks for the reply

Ok, so I havent really been workin g on this a lot more, but i did finish the enclosure for this POS, I did test fittings on my crt but I didnt take any pics, but heres a couple of the finished "box" ala pizza boxes. More pics of this in action when night comes, but from the test fittings i was impressed. enjoy

1. The Inside of my fresnal box
2. The two boxes
3. The fresnal frame in all it's duct tape glory.
4. music you cant hear: pandora radio (love it)

Ok I half-assed a little bit more to bring you into the deep dark realm I know as my basement (kinda its got a low ceiling so it more of a "dark-room". So if you dont mind seeing ghetto things. strain your eyes for the next couple of pics. I hung some BO cloth crappily on my basement ceiling, and hooked up an old laptop to my CRT monitor I will be using to demonstrate.

pics:
1.Welcome to my basement
2. my crappy couch
3. My laptop and the side of my CRT (if you can see it)
4. my BO cloth i hung up (my stupid friends got dirt by walking all over it, but oh well it'll serve it's purpose)

Run Forrest RUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!

More like: "It Puts the lotion on its skin!"

48 hours is not enough. The CRT TVs have a capcitor, it will take over a year to discharge after unplugged. And yes if you get shocked you're dead or a vegtable. And latex gloves are not enough protection.

BTW my first PJ was an ebay projector using a 13 inch TV, and yes it does work, but the projection is lousy. In fact if you find my plog (3rd or 4th page in the plogs archive) I have updated pics with using a triplet instead of the fresnels. Fulcrum's 1st projector with a tripletThe fresnel lenses gave a very poor image as compared to a triplet lense. The image of course is upside down, but you can invert it. I did by adding a switch. But I had exact instructions on how to do that with pictures so that I didn't get shocked.

It was fun though for the 1st time, and my kids liked watching a movie for about 1 hour and then the picture quality for them was too poor to continue. However, with my finished PJ, they ask me at least 2 or 3 times a week to watch a movie with it.

Anyway, best of luck. Just play it safe. Your Ebay PJ won't be your last, because it will hook you.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

Hoagtech, the fresnel that you get in the kit. What dimensions was it and do you know the focal distance?
Was thinking this may be a cheap source of fresnels?

Thanks

EDIT: Oh. thought you'd bought the ebay kit. In this case: 1. Are those magnifiers ok fresenels to use in a projector? 2. Does anyone know what the fresnels fomr ebay are like?

all right in order of q's

>8 1/2 x 11"

>Dont know the focal distance

>It could be because they were probably a quarter in. thick

1>I dont know if they can be used in a kit, because I dont know the size needed assuming your going for the 15 inchers, but based on quality I would say so because it did not bend, and I was surprised by the durability.

2> Yes. I do. I bought one of those kits about 4 years ago, and it promised to be better than the other ebay dealers, and that other promised 100" while they promised 300"!. But when i got it in the mail it wasnt any thicker than the envelope it came in. and wafered back and forth when it was grabbed.


So if your near an office depot or an office max or the like maybe some with a little more FL knowledge can be the judge. But they are thick

I can vouch for this but i believe its a 50-50% chance of getting hooked, me and a friend bought the $4USD kit off ebay which only included an undersized really flimsy fresnel. We both played with one for a while, i did a lot of research into DIY projectors and figured out about $500 or less for a reasonable working LCD build and he thought the price was to much. I on the other hand got hooked and i still have yet to complete my first working projector and have already killed 2 LCDs in the process.