Just so. The fresnels are rectangular, so this would pretty much have to be an artefact from them. It can't be from the precondenser, since that's round, it would have to be from the fresnels, which are cut rectangular.

@DAZZ: So you've got the arc||plano a bit closer with your calcs. I'll have a go at that and report back. Should be able to squeeze in a test this weekend. Thanks!

Downloading the 10E93 Windoze updates right now!!!

Setup using DAZZ's latest #'s and things are quite good. Plenty of issues to resolve but I'm typing this using the 575! Great clarity and color. No comparison to the other lamps I've tried.

Major issues remaining:

• still a bright spot in middle
• bleeding effect still there (vertical dark bleeding)
• can't get the damn computer to recognize the panel is WUXGA

I guess I'll stop there since I did say MAJOR issues.

I'll do up a screenie now just for fun. I have not made any attempt at calibrating my colors - all factory settings.

Stay tuned . . .

I know with an ATI vid card, sometimes I need to override the EDID of the controller to get full wuxga resolution... I think this was with the realtek controller I have... FWIW.

575 is nice, eh ? well... except for the heat !!


edit: beat you !

Cannot for the life of me get my camera to do justice to the images I'm seeing on screen so instead of posting substandard (colorwise as well as focus-wise a bit) screenies I'll just submit this:

Click to view attachment

Now that's a corner I've waited for for a l-o-n-g time!!! Thanks to all you smart fellahs (or is that fart smellahs?) that have kindly and patiently gotten me this far.

Now for the REST of the project!!!!! I ain't through with y'all yet!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit: Oh yeah, see that bleeding problem in there?

Say, anyone got an idea as to why my GeForce 6800 is being schizophrenic regarding properly recognizing my Kontron controller? In the past I've managed to get it working proper but right now it's being psychotic and won't let me drive it past 1024x768. Don't seem to be rhyme nor reason to when and why it'll work proper. I've got my eye on a new video card anyway but it would be nice if this'n would treat me a bit nicer before I sacrifice it on ebay. And could there be ANY chance at all the video card is to blame for this bleeding effect I'm dealing with on this WUXGA? Fat chance I guess since the new things I've introduced are the controller and panel but I suppose maybe it's not a total stretch of the imagination to think maybe there's some odd interaction between the video card, controller, and/or WUXGA panel causing this crazy bleeding? Eh, I've got a topic about the problem and another dude is experiencing similar things so I suppose I should pursue the issue in those topics but just figured I'd toss this out in my ploD as well. Later . . .

I’ve had some similar weirdness that I could not resolve in firmware, but it wasn’t a big deal on my machine running an Quatro Pro Fx.

Try this, go to Display Properties, Settings tab, advanced button, Monitor tab, and uncheck the “Hide mode that this monitor cannot display” option.

Jeesh...I get sick for a while and all of a sudden he starts makin progress...

Hmmmmmm...it's gonna take a bout of cancer to get him to finish it...

SJ

DC, try taking a matte black piece of construction paper and placing it under the LCD,Exact size of the LCD. If the bleeds are still there, then they are probably coming from the sides of the LCD. Might be coming from reflective surfaces inside the channels you use to hold the LCD...lts a noted problem in some LCD's that arent sealed or darkened correctly on their edges. I think the reason its purple is because your light is so freakin bright!


Just a thought...

Hmmm . . . my wife was just off work sick for a week. Some odd cosmic link there? Please skip the cancer and try giardia instead - that might help me a lot plus provide more fodder for your plog!!!

Giardia huh? Then we'd see how a plog really RUNS, now wouldn't we?!?!?!?

Trying to pick away at my "problems" one by one. At this precise moment I'm wondering why I couldn't manage a decent screenie using my Canon Powershot S30. It has the following white balance options:

TTL Auto White Balance, Pre-set White Balance (available settings: Daylight, Cloudy, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, or Flash) or Custom White Balance.

The colors would look okay on the camera LCD but when viewed on the computer monitor they were wonky color-wise.

I guess I'll try all the dang settings to see if any of them come out good?

I figured if I projected a white screen and did the Custom White Balance that all would be well but that screenie turned out super sucky. IIRC I also tried Daylight as well as just allowed it to Auto White Balance.

If anyone would care to offer any insight-for-idiots here as far as milking a good color screenie out of my camera I'd appreciate any schooling you can pound into my teeny brain.

Edit: Oh yeah - forgot to axe dis: Maybe this is really a silly question but here's one thing I did. I'd take the pictures I got using my camera and view them in a picture viewing utility along with the actual file I was projecting when I took the screenie pic. Is that clear? And when I'd page back and forth between the two pics (well, one pic and one file - okay?) they never looked alike at all. Obviously I can't just offer up the damn file and say "This is just how it looks on my projection screen" so how do I tweak the camera settings to match the file being displayed when I shoot a screenie pic of it? Gawd that must sound moronic! BTW I did this both using my projector and my unprojecterized computer monitors. Ach, I'll figger it owt someday!

We have a Canon S2 and it takes (well took, it broke) nice pictures even in auto. (Just won a Nikon D40 DSLR tonight )

For fun I have been learning a little about lighting and cameras. The daylight WB should have fixed your problem. Most of the MH lamps have a uneven power distribution of the light spectrum and the camera blows the WB, in manual mode it should have be fine. The Knob on top of the camera must be in P or TV or AV or M to use the manual WB.

I looked at the Canon manual and the camera does have a florescent H setting for high color temp florescent lamps. This will lower the green level down a lot so if the pictures are too green this will help.

Do you have too much noise or bad focus or just the colors are off? It also has a manual ISO setting under the Camera icon. Setting this to 100 or 50 will reduce the noise but the shutter time will be around a second at 50 ISO so you will have to have a tripod.

Post a picture and that may give us a better idea of what is happening.

One of the practice shots for the Christmas card setup.

Click to view attachment

4000 watts of hot lights and we still had longer than 1/60 shutter time!

Tell me those aren't your kids!!! They're w-a-y too good looking AV!!!

It's just a color thing with the pics. I'll work on it. If I have to I'll adjust them manually using the projector until they match up with the original while it's being projected. That's not cheating.

So, the 'nipple twister' didn't help rid the bright spot?

I can't say it made no difference at all but the spot is still there. I'm such a sad case that I can't even remember what I did last to that projector. Honest I can't!!!

Okay, before posting this I went back and reviewed my ploD. Looks like I must have gone nipple down since I di-STINK-tly remember doing so. I know I've been mulling over doing some reflector de-tuning, fore and aft shifting of the whole assembly, and even having a go at sticking a sheet of overhead transparency between the hot mirror and rear frezzie with either a "buffed out" spot with ultra-fine sandpaper to make it diffusive or actually laser printing on a varying density (based on a screenie of the hot spot) gray pattern to mask out the bright spot.

Yeah, right. Like Durachko will EVER get around to doing THAT!!!

Ya think the diffusion trick would be a "given" not to work?

That's what I assumed. I remembered sensibull doing the same and still had that spot shown up. I briefly tried a little HDMI from a cheap ole' Magnovox up-convert DVD player through my 10.6" onto a shower curtain in the garage and I was looking for any 'spot' to show up and there wasn't. I really don't know what to tell you . and btw this was with the 'nipple' turned to the side and not back towards the Proxima's reflector. I wonder if a meniscus lens like the one have would make your spot even worse in a double precon application.

You ever take a white screenie and fiddle with the brightness and contrast to see how bad you can make it look?

It seems odd that we'd (sensi and me) get this white spot and you'd get none, zero, zilch, nada. I'd think SOMETHING should be hiding there.

Maybe I can tweak it out but I think sensi pretty much beat himself silly trying with no joy.

Hmmm, guess I'll do that on my Dalite HP screen and that's is once I have completed it and ready to bring into the house which should be soon. Sure hope this 'spot' isn't lurking somewhere to show up somehow.

Can't wait to see what the image tweaking reveals. Maybe you'll have a perfect gradient. If so, I'll hate you even more than I do now!!!

Remember, Elken and someone else came up with some software to kind of automate this task. Well, Elken's software was not freeware. But any image tweaking software package should do what I wantcha to do.

Just blew my whole Paypal "mad money" account. Extra gig of RAM, RealFlight G4, and an nVidia 8800GT 512MB.

Should all be here by the weekend when I'll have a day or two in the house alone!!!

That means - provided SJ contracts a severe yet totally curable short-term disease with no aftereffects - I'll have something to report soon.

Wow I have been away from LL a long time, I come back to see whats new and big D is ALMOST finished!

Hehe, congrats on the progress man! Lookin sharp

@NN: Oh man . . . you are sadly mistaken if you think I'm almost DONE!!!!!

Thanks for the kind words in any case.

I saw your recent post about having 600hrs on your S51/575 and congratulations are in order. I'm happy you're enjoying your projector you stinkin' bum! <ENVY>

Is this what you were looking for?

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=162449


You do need a Working Computer

Requirements:

-.NET framework 2.0
-DirectX 9.0c
-Some sort of 3d card.

I uninstalled net framworks so can't do any more testing right now.

I was looking for that, thanks AV for pointing it out.

Holy shazbot lucretia!!! I ordered my memory and new video card from Newegg yesterday just before noon and unlike me I sprang for expedited processing for like $2.99 or $3.99. Guess what's waiting for me out in the rain in a plastic bag in central PA all the way from CA via UPS Ground last night when I get home from work???? WOW!!!!!!

Edit: Hey! Those cheaters! It was shipped from "Joisey" not CA. I guess that's just the corporate address???

Not exactly, I've ordered from them and got 4 shipments in 3 separate days from 4 locations, CA, NJ, TN and one more that I can't remember off hand, it could have been PA or possibly IL, but then again, those (PA and IL) could be from my earlier days ordering from tiger direct before I knew about newegg.

@HitesFiero: Just now pulled my Kontron to flash it and maybe flip my panel in light of recent revelations a la member msm.

Anyway, you asked what version board I had awhile back. Here's all the info I could glean from the PCB.

printed on board: V1.03 and E200175 WM328ML 94V-O 1706

white sticker: Board update to B!

greenish UPC-type sticker: A42211106090728

Edit: Okay, reflashed w/your latest. It is v1_3 right??? I'm so paranoid!!! Your hex filename is just the right length that when I retrieve firmware info only the version # is chopped off. But I'll just have to go on faith it did everything hunky-dory like.

Also busted my panel free and am gonna flip it now. Yikes!!!

Oh yeah, like I said, when I downloaded the "full" (?) version of the config utility from Kontron it wouldn't seem to work right - gave me some file format error when I'd try to load your files (pnl & hex) from disk (as hosted by me). But using that "older" version I got from you it seems to work just fine. You know what's up with that? Did I just download the wrong thing or sumpin'?

Crazy stuff. The nVidia Dualview is still acting totally nuttz. I can't get anything to display on the projector unless I only have that controller plugged in. And I can't get any OSD to come up. HF - could there be some crazy conflict with the firmware or what? I'll do some Googling about nVidia Dualview flakiness but this no-OSD problem is brand new. WTF?

Hi guys,
I want to know if using a HOT MIRROR I can get away get away with any active cooling in my box at all?

Can I built a projector with no fans using these mirrors? Who already did it?

Thanks.

I'd venture if you're building vertical it's virtually impossible unless - maybe - if you're using a relatively low wattage lamp. A horizontal build - or straight shooter - maybe you've got a better chance. My memory fails me as to whether anyone has actually pulled that off but someone will know.

Good news is I got things kinda working. Reflashed but ain't sure that was it. Part of the problem was the default input and default settings. The Kontron was set to 0 brightness and I couldn't see crap.

I just dunno. I'm delerious. Never up this late anymore.

Gonna play a little and then go to bed.

An update.

Flipping the panel seems to have eliminated the bleeding problem!!!
DAZZ & msm are both my heroes.

Now I've got to wrangle with the OSD and getting everything working together smoothly.

Last night I was befuddled by the following behavior - I ran an nVidia display optimization routine and first up (or nearly first) is "synching" the display. It's an RGB test pattern and some RGB bars with a brightness gradient or sumpin like dat. Well, I've no idea what the heck synching the display is so I just played around with my newly rediscovered OSD again.

Anyway, I found that single unit adjustments of some of the options (hue, contrast, saturation, brightness) could result in incredible things happening. Like the green would go from solid green to a mess of green and black dots displayed like "no signal TV snow". Does that sound right?

Also, when stepping through the entire range of panel adjustments from 0 to 100 there were these definite repeating cyclical patterns whereby every 4th or 5th increment the pattern would go into that noisy green mode.

I'll have to play with it a lot more to see if I can determine what the heck is going on since I'm totally clueless.

And trying alternate gammas? YIKES! That really whacked things out. But it's likely just my ignorance.

I'll keep at it . . .

One problem solved (bleeding), two more take its place.

Durachko, Durachko, hes our man - if he cant do it no one can!!! YEAAAHAHA GOOOO DURACHKO!!!!!!!!!

I don't claim to be an expert by any means, but it sounds like the controller's programming isn't perfect for that LCD. It's a laptop LCD, so there would usually be no OSD-- everything would be done in software and through a PC video card-- so when you introduce a programmable controller that is probably designed for LCD TV usage, there's gotta be things that don't sync up right.

Comments HF? I'll try to post something detailed and unambiguous about some of my odd observations sometime.

Plum forgot to plunk this in here - I took a luxie readin' whilst me panel wuz owt and got ~2000. Then I took a reading with the unpowered panel and got ~90. So, 90/2000*100=4.5% transmissivity. No surprises there. We can all still hate Supra and his mega-transmissive panel.

And that's the way that I measured my panels transmissivity, too.

I've been considering swapping out my 17" for a 15.4 WUXGA. I wonder if anyone would want my current one.

Examples of my crazy schtuff (crappy pics but they demonstrate what I'm seeing):

Gamma default and gamma alternate:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Color temp default and color temp alternate:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Brightness around 50ish and brightness a few units higher:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Dam nice D, I don't see a slightest vignet in there at all, do you?

While odd, I think that basically means "leave things at default."

The pic looks great though

While I haven't tested it with a luxmeter or software tweaking of a white screen picture I'm very happy with the projected image. I still have a hair of yellow/dark corners but only in the extreme corner and don't much mind it. I can fiddle with it slowly over the rest of my life.


Good answer! Yep, happy with getting this far. Pic is great. Not complaining just obsessing.

Ummm . . . I wonder if, maybe, possibly, errrrr . . . perhaps DAZZ has a theory?

I'm trying to keep him thinking so his brain doesn't atrophy.

Still have a minor hot spot issue but I'll pursue it slowly - as usual.

Also, there is still some flakiness with flashing the board and I'm wondering if something's up with that.

I’m back! Sorry I didn’t chime in sooner, my LL account had some “issues” . Don’t turn off the Gamma correction! That’s the one goofy bug that I haven’t been able to iron out.
As far as the brightness is concerned, I left the ceiling way high on that for the sake of adjustment, so just don’t take it that high.

Where you able to confirm which panel version you had in the boards EEPROM?

Not quite, the controller can drive any panel. It’s just takes a lot of trial and error in some areas, especially in the gamma tables. The LCD manufactures data sheets are really only good a starting point as far as timing and gamma are concerned.

OMG! I just reset your email addy in your profile as per your email request to me. Prolly will never see you again now!!!


I thought you entered all dem hexie #'s and things worked fine w/gamma stuff?? Whaddaya mean "don't turn off" gamma correction? You mean don't use anything other than the default setting I guess?


Fair enough.


You want me to read from the board and then do a file compare or what?

You must always keep in mind you're talking to DURACHKO here. Use lots and lots of very simple words!!!

No worries bud.



You can use any of the gamma correction settings without a problem, all the changes I made in HEX apply to those. But if you must run without gamma correction, lower your seperate RGB values in the advanced color menu to around 50 or 60 and tweek from there.



Yes, "read panel data from board" and check the panel data name



I think DURACHKO is a lot like Colonel Jack O’Neil from Stargate SG1, he's much smarter than he leads people to believe........

The "problem" images especially the color/brightness looks like what I have going on with my 15incher. Projects a hurge screen but when I alter the settings to tweak/make brighter, I get all sorts of messed up coloring. I figure it was a abd panel/controller and just bought a dead back light screen from fleabay. At least you have normla colors by default. Looks awesome

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be stressing over the odd behaviors since I can obtain a totally acceptable result anyway. And from what I can gather it's not that odd being as how HF (who wrote the firmware) explained how and why the odd behavior occurs. Seems it maybe could be avoided/eliminated but in truth it's not really necessary since I have full functionality but I just can't use the full range (0..100) of settings provided by the OSD menu.

I have bigger fish to fry than worrying over this stuff!

What it really comes down to is that the controller's range of adjustability and gain in terms of gamma are well in excess of what the panel can reproduce. This is a very good thing since it makes the scale of adaptation to newer panels huge. I just haven’t found a way to "cap" the scales when not using gamma correction. When running in gamma correction mode all the scales work perfectly and the images really popped because my modified gamma tables come into play. D did you try running in Gamma 1.8? How did it look? I think you would have a hard time not wanting to run it in that mode ounce you played with it.

I guess I should say that I'm shocked that DURACHKO finally has an image up!

It had been a great plog to read, 58 pages and over 109,000 views!

I will miss the snake stories

@AV: I ain't done yet!!!

@HF: The only time I tried an alternate gamma I got that wonky pic as seen above. I haven't played around since then. I'll work with it as time allows. I'm still just getting my feet wet. And thanks again for the awesome firmware effort!!!