good work pun15her!!!
Glad to see your enjoying the results after all the hard work!
Looks the business too..

I like black paint job too, much preferable to the flecky stone one.
Might have looked a little bit too much like the stonehenge prop from Spinal Tap

seriously though, nice one !

Ive been hard at mine, which is now glistening white...I'll post some pics soon as ive been offline for a while coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding, coating and sanding,

Foxy,sounds interesting,very interesting,cant wait to see it!!
Yes mydiazclan,she sits next to my computer desk,and I do stroke her!!!
tj,nice to hear from you!
I have just ordered one of these bad boys!!??
ebay usb dvd
I thought that is pretty cool,with no power lead!
Thought I would enclose it in shaped wood!!!!!
Thanks vroom.I am still amazed!!!!!

pun15her,

how do you control the multi ratio motor? Are you using a switch or a remote controll? If how do you have connected so the motor goes both left and right? If you are using a switch, which switch are you using? Thanks

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I thought alot about focussing.I wanted to keep it neat,so here is what I came up with;I used the controller from a remote control car bought for £1.99 at woolworths

Correct,thanks davehtr!
I found this pic,the controller is the bit with green and red buttons.
the grey 2 core wire went to a small electric motor inside the toy car,the black and red 2 core wire has been soldered onto what was the battery compartment terminals,but is now connected to a molex connector,and is suppliied 5v by the pc psu!

Hope this helps,venery99.
There are loads of things around that would do the job.I spotted one yesterday.It was a small plastic gear lever,again controlling a toy car,that pushed foreward and backwards,I thought that could be quite cool!

This project is so freakin cool words cannot begin to describe it.

You got the glow like at the end of the last dragon

ya go away for a couple days and several pages get added to your plog and the premere has happened! Congratulations on rockin images to go with the nice box!

Wow,the last dragon,cool.
What was her name???
Cheers wp.I appreciate the kind words.

Managed to get my hands on one of these:

It is so cool!!!
Easy to control the mouse on the BIG screen.(addictively fun too!)
It is made by interlink electronics,and is called the remotepoint.
They do some cool looking models too!

Had one of those things for the projector at my previous workplace, except it was a gyromouse

Very nifty for the big screen

pun15her would you be able to fill in the dimensions for these images?

Ok,STReNT.
Try these out for size!
I think they add up!!!




Hope this is what you wanted.(ie: mm's rather than inches?)
Cheers!

I have been shopping for a long svga cable today!
best I found was £20 for a 3m one!!
Then I found this website:
Cabling 4 less
£7.50 for 4.5m,Cool!!
Same day despatch too,should get here tomorrow!!???

I got my 5m extension cable for £6 off eBay

Oh and if anyone's trying to find a suitable motor/gear assembly for turning the bolt on the focusing mechanism, a cheap and easy solution is to hack apart a servo for radio controlled car/planes.
Basically you take it apart, remove all the electronics (including the variable resistor) just leaving the motor, then on the underside of the cap file away the 'stop points' so the mechanism can rotate freely.
This is what I'm planning for one of my future builds/rebuild, I may do a little image sequence on how to strip a servo for use on a focusing mech.

Punisher.....

Have you had any focusing issues due to the angle at which your triplet is compared to the screen?

Like the servo mod idea haku,I have built many a tiny antweight fighting robot,using that trick!!
here is a link to an excellent guide on how to do it,from the seattle robotics society
servo hack guide
5m for £6,Jeez,i thought mine was good!
At least I didnt get the 1.8m for £21 from pc world!!!!

Teh_Sting,Teh_sting,one,two,three!!
Havny had any probs with the angle of the tripplet,
Its not much of an angle,though.No more than a couple of books under the front of a straightshootin' box.
Its 10 degrees from horizontal.
I seem to have lost the focus at the bottom of the projected image while screwing around with the image,though!!
I dont think I'ts anything major though.
Unfortunately,I havn't had time to fire it up tonight,as I have been at a meeting.

Cheers.

Is the top meassurement supposed to be 235 instead of 335?

Probably should have put that, that image is for the LCD holder..

Is that what you dimensioned it for? Thought a 15" panel would be bigger than that?

No,accross the top is 335mm,for the lcd,
The lcd/fres holders are identical(btw)
I will illustrate it later,no time for now,sorry.

Ok, the dimensions don't add up then

4+8+211+8+4 != 335:)

Sorry STReNT,you are indeed correct,Outside measurement is 335,the inside measurement is 311.
My calculator must have been faulty!
I literally got the lcd,measured it and made the frame to fit that.
Sorry again,I realize that inaccurate measurements dont make life very easy,when doing stuff like this!!

Hello,all!!
Thought I'd post some more pics,fyi:
I thought I'd do a couple of comparisons.
There is an obvious picture quality improvement,it takes a littlewhile more to notice it in the pics than it does on the wall!!!



The old pic is first,and the new pic is second!



Just movind stuff in and out a bit has improved picture quality no end.

...and a couple more shots:




These two shots are from a divx ver of ghost in the shell.(very cool!)
And last but not least,an 800mb pic of leelu,blown up by 200 percent in paint,and then projected!!!!

This is SO amazing!!!

wow looks 110% better in those comparison photos..

I have been playing around a bit,and couldn't resist posting a beautiful pic of myself.(with some old bird!!!)

Just thought it was a nice pic.
BTW,cheers STReNT.Cant wait to see what you are coming up with!!!

Awesome. I just watched appleseed on my projecter. Anime and CG definetley shines on these PJ setups. Next is XBox for me.

just as a note,managed to get about 50% of required angle of keystone from fres angle.But I wouldn't like to go any more than that with focus constraints.
My dual vga m-bd with built in nview keystone stuff? s/w,that I have never noticed until tonight,has let me get a completely square image on the wall.I will try no mechanical keystone tomorrow,and push nview to its limits,mwaahawww??
If it works,it would be a cure for lack of focus,no biggie,but if I can eliminate it,then all the better!

Yo,zroth....X-box is next on my list,but being in the uk,I may have to wait for the next gen to even seriously think about it as us europeans are pretty stuffed as far as I can make out!!!

Congratulations - VERY impressive! Now, if only my own problem was too much light!

BTW, I hope SWMBO isn't around while you're taking all these photos with "other" women...

He,he!

I have got the contrast and brightness on the monitor down to about 75% at the moment!
Seems to help the whitewash effect!
And yeah she was at work!
Cheers!

Got some more drawings for you if you don't mind filling out the dimensions

I'll just link to them to stop the page from getting bloated.

http://projector.strent.net/Scaled-Right.jpg

http://projector.strent.net/Scaled-Bottom-Top.jpg

Try these out for size,thought I would post them,if thats ok,maybe of use to others???



Please note the 20mm measurement from bottom fres to lcd,is from bottom of mount to bottom of mount,ta!
Good luck STReNT!

Please keep the dimensions comming!!! I'm particulary interested in the side panels!

Tmproff;
That was a relatively easy bit!!??.
I cut 2x pieces of mdf slightly bigger than I needed,but to the right shape.
Then I hand drew a curve on one of the pieces,cut it with a jigsaw,placed the bit I had just cut over the other piece and marked and cut that piece,and VOILA!

Then I sanded the cut curve until the parts meshed!
Bit of a hatchet job really! Worked fine though!

I hear you. You may want to think about ordering an NTSC XBOX and use it on the projector. That way you won't be waiting 6 weeks for PAL releases everytime a new game launches.

Talking to Neda,apparently the next gen box sounds as if it might be just what we are all looking for,multi format,and a whole lot more!!!

Just one pic today!!,and it didn't come out too well either.
I have been chasing my own tail with all kinds of brightness/contrast/hue/saturation/blah,blah,blah!!!!
Anyway,just thought this was a cool pic,cos it's BIG!!!!

ROAR,yeah baby!!!!

I like that shark pic. That's like the last image a few unfortunate people ever saw.

I went into Woolworths the other day looking for that RC car you got for £1.99. I plan to use a couple for reversing the polarity of motors as you did in your focus mech. I couldn't find one. Have you got a pic of what the car looks like. it might help me track one down.

If not does anyone have any wiring diagrams for reversing polarity to a motor? I've got 2 push to make switches I planned to use to accomplish this but don't think that's going to be enough. Or is it?

I know what you mean.The switch inside the hand controller was perfect,but hard re-create.I thought about making a decent one,but it is a bit of a head f**k.(for want of a better term!)
It was on the pocket money carousel.£1.99 for 2x formula1 style cars each with a controller.Unfortunately,I dissmantled the first one to see how it worked,but it was one of those things where,as soon as you undid the screws,the whole thing dissintergrated into pieces,half of it spread all over the kitchen floor.
I will have a look and see what I can find!!

Actually,having a 12 year old son,who is into lego...
They do a modular controller,to make a simple motor go foreward and backwards.
This would probably be a better quality unit for doing the same job.I found a pic of one,(it is the "brick" behind the monkey!

Any thing like this would do.Maybe try toysrus in portslade???
Happy hunting!

...Or,If someone was feeling particularly adventurous....
How about an oopic!
I actually have an oopic-r,controlling a 6 motored 2 legged robot that I made a while back.
One of those would control all your needs.Plus ,what would be awesome,you can control all of the functions,plus fan speed,maybe?? using a wireless ps2 controller,or any learning remote!!
I think we are talking ULTIMATE here though.Too tough for me,but for someone who knows their robotics.A piece of cake.These things can do it all,connect a temp monitor and lcd display,and it will control focus/keystone/etc,and you could even drive your pj round the room!!!

Check it out here:
OOpic homepage

That monkey is a bit bizzare. By coincidence during a cupboard search today I stubbled across some long forgotten lego with a similar controller. Not really suitable for incorporating in a nice looking control panel though.

Thanks for your efforts but I think I've found a good solution. While looking for wiring schematics on reverse polarity I came across some basic car electric window diagrams.

I think electric window switches are perfect for the job. They'll flush fit the panel and there are plenty on ebay for peanuts too.

Good job!
I just remembered that in my local £1 shop,I found a piece of s**t car that would do the job too.If you want 1,or2! I would be more than happy to pick one (or 2) up for you!!!
But actually your idea seems alot more robust than mine,well done!!

That's actually what I am thinking of doing With an IR remote.

Got another image for you to dimension


Almost there...

Here's a to scale drawing so far for those interested(except for the fan back part that i dont have the dimensions for).

Quickly knocked this image up, I'm planning on using this for my focus mechanism when I rebuild:



The switch needs to automatically spring back to the center when you let go of it for it to work properly.

For wiring car alarms and setting up power locks, the actuator motors take currint in positive or negative polarity to control the locks. This is typically controlled by either one or another pulse to a relay. This leaves the switch at low current, regarless of the load current, and also preventsshort circuits. If both the "lock" and "unlock" circuits are active at the same time, it drives the two leads of the motor to the same polarity, resulting in no voltage potential across the motor.

The center lock switch is the same idea, and is used in a similar manner to the relays. Pushbutton DPST switches could also do the same thing.

WOW! Your image improved by leaps and bounds!! Okay, no more "I moved a bit of this ..., added a bit of that ...". WE WANT DETAILS

What exactly did you align because the difference is dramatic. The green push I mentioned earlier is now all but gone.

Come on, spill the beans Mr.

Wow,looking good STReNT!!
Seriously good!
Slight problem with the dimensions for the fans.
To measure them properly,I would have to take out the image bank and then remove the fan shielding!
I do need to do this soon.But not for a little while,sorry!
However,the hole needs to be the size of 2x evercool pcac's.
Hope this is helpful!

I think the better colours are down to 2 things.
1: painting the wall that I am projecting onto white instead of blue!!!!
2:using zoomplayer rather than wmp!
The image quality,was much improved by adjusting the mirror by hand to get the line of image square with the tripplet,It was very noticeably brighter when I got it spot on!
I am using nvidia keystone sw to eliminate the need for internal keystone adjustment,this is hopefully going to let me get sharp focus from top to bottom,(not happening yet though! )

No worries, i'll just hunt down the dimensions for the evercool's

Thinking about it,I am not going to get uniform focus unless I get a slanted screen,I think???

QUOTE
Don't forget, with such an extreme angle, and in all keystone, the projection lens needs to be parallel to the screen also to produce even focus acrross projected image.


--------------------

joe@lumenlab.com<----- Making Something Complicated is Easy...... But Making Something Simple and Functional Takes Genius........
QUOTE

Pulled this from the help forum.
Guess that answers my question!!
Ceers Joe!!
Looks like I will need a slanted screen for uniform focus!