$6 Ipod Nano Projector

Step 3 Testing

So I set it up to project the Ipod image (39mm diagonally) to roughly the size of a DVD case (230mm diagonally).  It turned out that the distance from the focal plane to the screen was 670mm (around 2 feet 2 inches).  Any bigger and it was too dim to focus.  Hopefully this might help you in your image size & distance calculations.

Hopefully I'll find a suitable donor camera or MP4 player and actually use the projector's light source.

Comments

[financial]

 is there a way to make the images not flipped?

[dombeef]

Use a mirror as shown in my instructable

[tewharau]

If you are trying to flip the image upside down, you could point the projector up and reflect it off a mirror to the wall.

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).

[sjoobbani]

 or, you could put the projector on a box, and slide the ipod thru, so it fits exactly, with all of it covered..... 

[Gerde]

Hi tewharau,
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

[tewharau]

 Hi 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!

[Gerde]

Hi again,
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

[tewharau]

 Hi 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.

[ERCCRE123]

Was this the projector you used to make a macro lens? I recognise the $6 sign witten on it

[tewharau]

 Haha, yeah, same one.... lucky I didn't have to modify the lens and could use it for this one too. 

[ArkAngel762]

is there a possible way to place a lense in front of the iPod so the screen wont be reversed?

[chopperdr]

how about just using a replacement screen from somewhere like fixmyipod . com (Not advertizing for them, but the only ones i could think of off the top of my head) ive seen them as low as $15.00 i know its a bit more than $6 but it will save your hand me up ipod for use latter, and when i tried to remove my screen from my 5G ipod i broke it :(, but good luck with this project it is a great idea

[tewharau]

Not that I know of, but if you disassembled the Ipod, you could turn the LCD screen around so it would come out right.