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First, I should start by saying that I got this idea from Killa-X's comments and photos on Tanntraad's "Make an Ipod Video Projector" Instructable. What I really wanted to do was take out a functional LCD screen that was roughly "slide sized" and place it where the slide would have gone in a slide projector.
Imagine if you took that digital camera that you dropped and broke the lens but it still reads memory cards and does photo slide shows on its little screen. If you take the backlight off the LCD you can project light through it so if you could fit it inside a cheap slide projector, you'd have a wall-sized digital photo frame.
I already had a slide projector from my $6 lens Instructable but I didn't have a spare digital camera to sacrifice so I decided to do a "proof of concept" projector using the backlight of the ipod as the light source. Of course it was never going to be very bright but hopefully someone will take the idea and run with it.
Imagine if you took that digital camera that you dropped and broke the lens but it still reads memory cards and does photo slide shows on its little screen. If you take the backlight off the LCD you can project light through it so if you could fit it inside a cheap slide projector, you'd have a wall-sized digital photo frame.
I already had a slide projector from my $6 lens Instructable but I didn't have a spare digital camera to sacrifice so I decided to do a "proof of concept" projector using the backlight of the ipod as the light source. Of course it was never going to be very bright but hopefully someone will take the idea and run with it.
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Signing UpStep 1Basic Concepts
A slide projector has a light source (in this case a 12v 50w bulb) which is reflected and diffused to make as much of its light directed and evenly spread across the focal plane (slide or LCD to be projected). It's also necessary to separate the heat source (light bulb) from the focal plane because slides and LCDs can melt and burn.
I'd love to use all of this, but as I said in the introduction, I don't have a spare LCD to project so I'm using my "hand-me-up" Ipod Nano as my light source, reflector, diffuser & LCD. This simplifies the process significantly as I just need to place the Ipod in the focal plane and then do some tidying up. I think an Ipod with a larger screen and adjustable brightness (or hacked super-brightness) would be even better.
If you are old enough to remember using a slide projector, you put the slides in upside-down and back-to-front for them to be projected right side up and front-to-front.
Luckily the Ipod easily fits upside-down but the back-to-front proved impossible. You'll see later that it's pretty obvious the projected images are reversed.
I'd love to use all of this, but as I said in the introduction, I don't have a spare LCD to project so I'm using my "hand-me-up" Ipod Nano as my light source, reflector, diffuser & LCD. This simplifies the process significantly as I just need to place the Ipod in the focal plane and then do some tidying up. I think an Ipod with a larger screen and adjustable brightness (or hacked super-brightness) would be even better.
If you are old enough to remember using a slide projector, you put the slides in upside-down and back-to-front for them to be projected right side up and front-to-front.
Luckily the Ipod easily fits upside-down but the back-to-front proved impossible. You'll see later that it's pretty obvious the projected images are reversed.
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If you are trying to invert the image left to right, you could "rear project" it onto a piece of frosted glass.... See my instructable on spray-on glass frosting.
A friend of mine had a piece of frosted perspex (plexiglas) standing vertical in the middle of his living room. I asked him what it was for and he laughed and turned on a projector sitting on a bookshelf. The perspex became a screen and you could see the video image on both sides (although one of them would be reversed, of course).
great idea and realization.
Somehow I was thinking you would use the ipod display as an actual slide.
So what if you took apart an ipod, separated the electronics from the display and used it as a see trough slide, to be projected onto the wall by the projectors lamp.
(under the condition, the display is see through ...
let me check on my broken nano
bye Gerde
That is exactly what I wanted to do but didn't have a broken ipod.
I bought a camera with a broken lens so I could use the LCD out of it to make a slideshow projector, but then I found an instructable to fix it so I've been using it as a camera.
Please post pics if/when you get it going!
I just got done, taking the ipod apart.
To proove the concept I can say:
"Yes it is possible to remove everything from the LCD Display in an ipod nano* "
(* 1st generation with a simpler display, than they use now, argh)
anyway... here are the pictures, taken of my ipod, some of them with a reversal lens adapter and a 28mm f2.8 lens for an analog 35mm SLR
bye Gerde
That is excellent! If you can separate (or fold up) the backlight and place the LCD in a slide-shaped casing, you should be able to drop it into place and (hopefully) have the IPOD on top of the casing so you can control it.
Remember that when projected, top becomes bottom, and left becomes right....so you'll need to have the screen upside down and "facing" the light source so it displays correctly when projected.
If you were nearby, I'd happily drop by my slide projector and we could have a go at making it work, but I suspect you are in Europe, so we couldn't be any further from each other.....
Keep up the good work, and feel free to make an instructable and I'll put a link to it from this one.
Just a thought...
Of course, my original second-hand "home theatre" projector was 640x480 and I remember at the time thinking it was fantastic. One trick I used to do was make it slightly out of focus so the pixels weren't obvious. You can see on my sample photos that the picture is sharper at the top and the pixels are more obvious than at the bottom, which is slightly out of focus.
...and pixelization might be the new Lomo
The 'out of focus' idea is interesting and I can see how that would help. Just have to get beyond the 1080 people.
Like I said, I still dig your work. I don't always care about absolute perfection. Really cool DIY is more often than not adequate (and more fun!).
Take care.
-Cheers, Chris
A potential problem to think about is heat- projector bulbs kick out a lot of heat and LCDs don't like being overheated. A FL or LED bulb and/or some IR-blocking glass (available from projector-making-supplies places) could help with this, and perhaps a CPU fan to cool down the LCD.
In the last paragraph of the Intro, the author wrote,
So, for this project, the iPod's LCD backlight itself is the light source.
The author described what they wanted to do (rip an LCD out of a camera), and expressed hope that someone else might use this I'ble as inspiration to do that.