Well, after lots and lots of reading i have decided to get my project up here at LL.
Like many others, I found my way here through the Toms Hardware article and i guess you could say my project lies midway between the two topics!

Firstly thanks to Brain and co. and all other Lab members for such a great site!

Basically this is my first project and has been worked upon at weekends and the odd evening, when my partner is out working late. This means clearing up the kitchen table in a real hurry...

I'm sure I'm due some flaming for firstly not going down the MH route but in most other aspects my PJ stays true to a good deal of the LL projector design.

Once I've got as far as i can with this, I intend to start a second project when I'll also have access to a decent workshop , but for now I'd thought I'd share with you what can be done when you rip out the guts of of a 400 watt OHP and rehouse it in a LL style enclosure! I was curious to see how the optics of such a system could perform when you eliminated all light leakage, which is the bane of overhead projection.

Here goes then... (apologises for the variety in picture quality, some shots are taken with (( fairly decent )) phone cam and the others with a 1.5 mp cam.

The first job was to carefully measure the exact distances of the OHP lense and optics. The guts were then assembled within a unit made from 16mm MDF. I remove the steam boat fan from the transformer as it did a fairly poor job of removing the heat. It relied previously upon large vents in the OHP which were not going to be feature of my box..
Two 12v PC cooling fans were added to the rear of the box, one beneath the lamp as an intake and the other above as an outlet. These are powered by a small PSU i butchered from an old shuttle pc. I knocked together a housing for this at the rear of the box.

Heres the basic ingredients mounted in the new casing...
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..and with the new cooling engine in place..
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Next I figured that as Halogen's pump out a hell of lot of heat, I'd have to channel some air to cool the fresnel and lcd. For now I've opted not to add keystone adjustment and keep the fresnels together in front of the lcd panel. But their dimensions basically meant that they sealed off the lcd from the light chamber. A quick test with an old dead panel revealed that the lcd would heat up very quickly isolated as it was in front of the fresnel. So to prevent having to add another fan to independently cool the panel ( and an unwanted hole for an outlet in the top of the unit ) i decided to cut down the fresnels to roughly LL proportions. After splitting them apart (not easy ) , I left them an inch larger than the lcd panel itself and built a custom 'sandwich frame' which holds them nice and tight due to it being bolted together all round the frame..
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The optics that came with the OHP have a built in focusing mech which has a good range so I decided that a focus box was not neccessary in this case..
Quick pic of the nice, simple ohp controls housed in the side of the box..
One switch allows you to dim the image (!?)

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With the new cut down fresnels in place in their new frame, there would be a gap above and below it to channel that much needed air to the lcd. Luckily my lunch trip to the local sandwich shop threw a skip in my path and a large sheet of 1mm steel was lugged back to the office! I planned to create an air duct which would do the job of cooling the panel. It's difficult to explain so have a look at this instead

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once I'd got the tin snips into action i knocked out my shape (still needs a bit of shaping) i threw it into place. I will probably cut a new one with a lip style footpint so as i can fasten it directly to the base of the box. ( BTW the circular hole you can see was an older attempt to cool the LCD but the extra fan was too noisy :angry: . I'll fill this soon enough..

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And now the panel..

Used a Proview cy565. I'm sure you've all seen enough teardowns so i'll spare you the agony and get to the facts..yes it has an FFC issue but this is easly resolvable with the 20pin .5mm extension that Brain kindly sent me

Care has to be taken with the vertical board once its allowed a 90 degree swing but I'm working on some protection for it as we speak..

The plastic frame for the Lcd had handy clips that slipped perfectly around my newly built frame..again needs a good cleanup and a bit of sanding..
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here it is roughly in place. And away with that damn camera phone out of action at last
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god that halogen looks small in there

but it really pumps out the light..

heres a test shot at last..no proper screen as such yet..so fireplace and paintings in the way im afraid!
Widescreen and approx 12ft from wall..camera makes it grainy which is a shame.,crappy 1.2 megapix doesnt deal with the dark very well...

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I dont know...That looks pretty watchable to me. Nice job. Did you have any trouble with the halogen casting a yellowish tinge to the photos?

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I dont know...That looks pretty watchable to me. Nice job. Did you have any trouble with the halogen casting a yellowish tinge to the photos?

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Hmm. hard to tell. I've heard a lot about the yellow halogen tinge. I havent noticed it particularly in either photos or in person..I will try some dummy shots with a white desktop or something similar to test this out.
Overall im real pleased with the light spread..

another quick one with the Big Man!

Very red scene BTW. Western at dusk!
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Looks pretty good to me too!
Seriously,very nice!

I think a very nice DIY job keeping in the spirit of using what is at hand and this helps to keep the cost down. My first effort was a gutted ohp to build my own light box using a overhead panel. We enjoyed it but it was not nearly as nice looking as your.....great job!
Spock

thanks for your comments pun15her and spocktwin!

I'll post more pics as I progress in this, still a load to do..as i try and squeeze every last inch out of this halogen! (shame I've only got 50 hours to play with )

Decent screen next and cosmetic work on the box..bring on the weekend

"The Quick and the Dead"?

sniff! that reminds me of my fresnels before I broke 'em

great looking results, though, at least there's hope for my OHP triplet.....unless I drop that next

"The Quick and the Dead"?

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Quick and the Dead indeed Samuraijack.
Looking forward to some big screen 'Unforgiven'

cheers

I think Pale Rider would also look fantastic on one of these rigs...

stayed tuned then...I've got the whole collection

hay foxey we are basicly live next door i love the results of your pj im looking forward to see my end results

nice one aaron! are you a Londoner then or Kent or somewhere? I live in Camberwell, grim place but good car boot sales nearby
cheers for your comments i wish you luck with your project too!

im from chatham in kent thanks i need all the luck i can get i am no good with wood work. LOL

just noticed what a superb idea your air flow chanelling is!
Wish I'd thought of that.
Very good!!

haha still up at this hour pun15her !

me too just finished a bit of sanding so thought Id have a quick ciggie and a browse on the forums before i hit the sack!

cheers for comments on the air channeling. I wanted to blast as much air at the LCD as i could so this seemed like a good solution.Plus i love using the tinsnips
Good weather today in London..made me decide to split the fresnels and go down the keystoning route (theres some logic in there somewhere i know it)

Picked up a dremmel at Homebase yesterday. You were right. So useful!

cheers

Night Foxy!

quick update, got a bit of work done over the weekend. Designed and cut my new housing for the panel controls and vga input. Wasn't happy at all with the first effort ( two crap slots cut into the side of the box-moral - don't rush this stuff

heres a couple of shots of the new unit..Second one shows it installed into a rebate within the box and wood filled round the join. The wood kind of looks nice so i may just leave it bare when i get round to painting the box..

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in it goes...
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Looks good,Foxy.Its all in the details!!

that really is nice work!

thanks pun15her and TJ101!
Ill be posting my results real soon

hello again folks! update -

got somemore stuff done over the weekend..
Managed to fix an FFC issue with some hot glue. The LL extension is too thick to allow the clamp to hold it firmly in place on the panel edge board. Heres my fix for that , works a treat.
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and some glue applied to the ziff pins to prevent any shorts! cheers Brain
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Also heres the lens i'm using . Its a 315mm triplet from the OHP that started this project..useful as it has a decent focus mech built in which has a good enough range to stop me having to build a focus box...
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and heres my crazy setup. Ive begin to sand the box ready for its sealant, Still need to make access for the panel power supply lead (seen at top) and finally get round to painting the box. Keep wondering whether black is the best option as ive seen some nice wood finishes out there..mind u I'm using MDF so staining won't work too well
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been watching a few films during the process..couldnt resist!! Nothing with guns or spaceships unfortunately cos the wife doesnt' go for that..
But heres a couple of shots to see how things are going. BTW the frame is the window from windvd...
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and last for today!

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oh yeah - question:
since installing the ffd show filters and zoomplayer ive got weird green border/artefacts on my movies...1 pixel horizontal line at the top and a thicker strip of translucent green at the bottom of the image. FFD is not enabled as i thought that may be the issue. Its not the panel itself (phew) cos it appears on my connected CRT as well. It's now an issue for WMP , winDVD and Zoomplayer..can;'t seem to rid myself of it..

any ideas would be greatly appreciated !

cheers in advance

Looking really good foxy.Very nice indeed.
Can't help with your image problem I'm afraid.
Just wanted to say:Good job!

cheers mate

Foxy, what version of Fddshow are you using? If its 20050328, the author has flat out said it was built by someone else.

thanks samuraijack for your response!
its the link straight from benchuns forum but ill check the version number now...
do you have an up to date link for FFDshow?

samuraijack

just checked yeah it is 20050328!

any advice hereon?

Take it out and go to Sourceforge or a reliable site that has his last stable version. Apparently someone else took the "liberty" of recompiling it and releasing it like that. One of the noted problems is undersynch like you noted on your screen.

Im racking my brain trying to remember what I did when I ran into this last year. I think I had to change the encoder preferences.

You dont have VOBSUB installed, do you? That band on the bottom looks suspiciously like an overlay area for forced subs.

Just out of curiosity, how does it look in media player?

your right samuraijack..

i installed vobsub the other day- my spanish wasnt quite good enough!
However i have uninstalled the rogue version of FFD and undated to an official version. Seems to have resolved the green banding like u said. Also I'm noticing less of a CPU hit when i play around with resizing.

Thanks very much for your insights

If its not to cheeky, would you spare a minute to describe your settings for FFDshow filtering as its very useful to check out others peoples methods!

thanks again!

I actually dont use any special FFDshow settings in my rig. I ran across this problem when I was doing resizing for a vid project. I played around with it for a bit, but found it too intrusive for what I was trying to do ( PAL to NTSC conversion with CCE 2.67 and DVDRB ) I might try it again later after the PJ is done, since I will be running it from a dedicated rig. Just basic settings for now.

There was a gentleman from spain who posted some settings when they were discussing post processing and rendered images. Darned if I can remeber the group though.

Psot some pics for us?

Been busy doing other stuff for a couple of weeks :angry:
But this weekend i was able to complete the paint job on my box!
Decided against black which seems kina popular but i figured i wanted something
slightly less "aggressive" looking as this will be a permanent fixture in the living room!
So after two coats of MDF sealant, numerous coats of primer and sucessive sanding, i put the final two coats of satin white plasticcote on and am very pleased with the results. There's a couple small dings here and there but only noticeable from a real close up

Have I got the first white projector ? Probably not....

Next on the list...whack everything back inside, kick back and watch films for the next year or two...

....

another

last one for tonight...

Some of your pictures did not show up.

sorry folks having b***dy nightmare trying to attach images..Can;t work out whats goin on!!!!

Uhmmm, Foxy?

Where's the love?