All right, I've finally started, a mock up at least.

Things I have
Samsung syncmaster 150mp
s400dd
mogul
electronic ballast
fresnels (standard)
field lense (standard)
some switches and wires from radio shack
foam board
(w00t for early christmas presents!)


Hopefully all goes well, I've got a goal to have a superbowl party with a projected image, but I don't know how feasible that will be. We'll see.

I went to michaels and got some foam board because I wanted to start a mock up and didn't have any cardboard lying around, making a box with only 3 sides is really hard to get stable haha

Anyway, I've been measuring out, and trying to get everything in order. I've adopted some ideas from FLY CRJ's projector and Dweezilkid....

From Fly, i plan on trying the adjustable light bulb w/ adjustable reflector (mounted on a heat shield) which can be seen here
It seems a little complicated, but I think better than tweaking and trying to remount things. While planning though, I was wondering which fresnels I should make adjustable? The auto keystone one should have enough room to swing, but should it be able to move forward and back? Should the rear fresnel move? I doubt it since it's 220 mm from the light, and the light can move, but who knows.

I ended up getting the same monitor as Dweezilkid (Samsung Syncmaster 150mp, LCD TV), so I'm following and looking at his plog very closely.

Time for some pics!!!


First, here's the box on the ground... kinda dumb looking, but it's a start


Second, an angular shot with some labels telling you what's going on. The color coding is drawn over my pencil markings, which I don't think were visible in the camera shot, and they just show the placement of the 3 major components.


This was a better shot. Again, layout and dimensions. The extra room behind the bulb should hold the wiring, and allow for the adjustable heatshield (w/ attached reflector). I haven't decided yet how that will all be put together, in terms of there being a sled for the bulb + reflector (like FLY CRJ), or perhaps just a mounting that goes through the entire enclosure (eww, light leaks!).

That's all for now!!! comments welcome!

Smart move with the foam board I was to lazy to do it so I realied on Illustrator to put in accurate measurement good luck with your build.

Good thinking- I'm going to use your mock-up idea when designing my next pj.
Later- capt kirk

Yay! I did something good enough to be swipe-worthy!

Good start... the foam core mockup is a great idea. Putting it all together only to find you need extra space / adjustability is frustrating. Hopefully you can avoid that.

The 150MP is pretty easy to work with. Just put some thought into laying out all those circuit boards before you build. Are you gonna stick with the square box? If you do, you might be able to lay out the boards without doing it double-decker style like I did.

The front fresnel (triplet side) should be 100% adjustable. Don't know if you need vertical keystoning, horizontal or both... but keep it flexible. The rear fresnel can be in a fixed position, but don't nail it down until you've test fired. You'll want to find the optimal position for brightness & cooling (allowing enough space between the fresnel and LCD to channel air from the cooling slit). Also, if you're gonna remove the antiglare, you may find placing the rear fresnel too close will give you 'rings' on the picture. Moving it back a few millimeters will fix this.

Thanks for linking to FlyCRJ's adjustable lamp socket. I'm planning on building one of those, and I'd almost forgotten about his design.

Good luck! Lemme know if you've got any questions...

@ DM: Thanks man

@ Kirk: Yeah, i was wondering if it was worth it, although it's nice to have a physical unit to fool with. I'm not that good with solidworks or CAD so I figured I had to go this route...

@ Dweez: Thanks Dweezil!!!
I really value your input, considering your awesome results and the fact that you used the same monitor that I have.

a) I think I should have enough space, because I added a few inches. I did notice that with a 16" width, the lamp, when centered, is about 1/4-1/2 inch from the side, which is really close, but doable.

The boards? Yes, i'm sticking with a square box... I'm wondering now if I should extend it up an inch more to put them under the LCD and fresnels w/out making it double decker, or do you think there should be enough play in the cords (i haven't taken the LCD apart yet to actually look at everything... I'm kinda paranoid with that part, and I wasn't planning on taking it out for my mock up.)

Thanks for the advice bro, and onward we go!

PS: I guess I picked a bad time to start this if anyone actually wants to follow along. I"m gonna be leaving for vacation next week for 15 days, so there won't be any updates in that time. But after that... should be some hardcore shizzy!

Let there be light!!!!

Got my ballast/lamp wired for fun and fired it up. DAMN that thing gets bright. It's like day time in the house... in the middle of the night. Insane stuff

Coincidentally I had picked up some #8 wood screws at home depot the other day when I was buying things (I picked up a couple paacks of those to help put my enclosure together) and they're the exact size for mounting the mogul. So... that was cool. I'll post some pictures of the crazy bulb a little later tonight.

Here's a design I was thinking of for the front fresnel. It's a dowel holding the fresnel, like usual, pivoting on a pair of eye pins... looking like this: o-
I don't know if it will pivot if the hole isn't big enough, and I definitely don't want it to droop, but I think if I assemple that whole piece at the betginning then I can slide it in like that. here's a diagram of what I'm talking about... sound like it'll work, maybe?



Secondly, here's the diagram for my sled/frame. I was thinking about taking pieces of 1x2 wood, and cutting a 1/4" groove along the length, and then framing the fresnel/lexan/LCD this way. The only thing is... the groove is 1/4" because the box is 16 " wide, and the first fresnel is 12.5" wide, which leaves 3.5 " on either side... so split that in half and you have 1.75" of wood, but there needs overlap in the fresnel... so I had to go up to 2 ".

If there's a 1/4" groove on each side that's gonna take a whole half of an inch off the width of the fresnel, that ok?

here's the proof that my lamp is working... not a picture tho, a video

haha, and we had a little fun with it.

Hope you enjoy!

http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~jlevi/projector/LuxNiveus.wmv

All right, not too much goin on, because I had a vacation over winter break (cruise to hawaii, w00t!) but I got my wood cut for the box at home on the table saw (so much easier than a circular saw!!!) and I "free assembled" the box to see how it looks. Pretty good, although big.

(outside dimensions are 31.5" x 17.5" x 13.5")

Been working a little more.... haven't assembled the box yet, but have my lamp kinda placed, w/ the adjustment dealy.... The lamp is a little crooked, but the lamp arc is over the dot i drew (220 mm) on the base... you think that's ok?

ALL RIGHT!

I decided today was the day to get a test image (if you can call it that)

I assembled my box with several screws to hold it together, and then placed the fresnels on two dowls that were resting on the top of the box. I fired up the lamp and....


....no go, but then i saw a bright dot right above my field lense, and I knew the problem was the 2 inches or so that my lenses were off by hanging from the top of box rather than the place where they're supposed to be mounted...

never fear, i grabbed my clips, and clipped each fresnel with 2 of them. Had my buddy come over, and we manually held the fresnels in the spots where they're supposed to be mounted, and w00t!!! SQUARE WHITE LIGHT ON THE WALL!!!!

haha...it's much more exhilerating than it should be

to do:
mount fresnels inside, lexan&220fresnel hanging from dowel in back, 320 in front
paint inside of box
strip LCD
build focus box
mount LCD
cut hole for fan and attach
mount ballast & switches
wire everything.
test fire?

Well....
Long time no update.

With school, and work... I've just been so damn busy, I haven't had a chance to work on this at all. But... .I finally got a day where I should have been doing my homework, and I got some work done on the ol' PJ

Anyway.... it's been slow going... i made like 5 trips to home depot today because i hadn't planned stuff out very well. I'm working on the frame for my rear lens, and i still have yet to strip my LCD, and mount that. I think i'm gonna try to sandwhich the LCD between 3 pieces of 1/8" board...

here's how the lens frame ended up


And another.


more to come soon hopefully

so... I was able to get a bit more work done today. Got my lenses in and I can never wait... so i had to fire it up to test the optics... .luckily the bulb was movable.... now all i gotta do is get something to focus on to see how that part of it is.

Here's the results!




This shows the light spillage around my triplet at the moment... without any tweaking (once i moved the light bulb up to get the light in the right spot.) anyone think that looks like more than what I should have?



And last but not least... the guts w/ the lights on