Here’s a totally ridiculous project that I finished last night. It’s been sitting in the corner of my room in an ugly half-finished mess for months, and now it will sit in the corner in an ugly finished mess.
Basically, this is a super-cheap video projector that I made from those optical bits that I pulled out of a discarded projection TV. Plus a broken portable DVD player I bought off ebay for ten bucks, plus a lightbulb.
The crux of the project is the LCD display that I pulled out of the portable DVD player. I bought one that didn’t have a working backlight, because that’s the part that will be replaced by the lightbulb.
I decided to use a plastic bucket for the project frame, because I have a zillion of them lying around the house. First step was cutting a hole in the lid that was roughly the same shape as the LCD panel, and also cutting a piece of safety glass that will insulate the LCD screen from the fearsome heat of a 90watt incandescent bulb (I can’t believe we used to use those things, do you have any idea how hot they get?).
The bolts sticking up are to hold the projection optics. By adjusting the height of the lenses from the LCD panel, the focus of the projected image changes.
Actually, this next image doesn’t show you anything new.
Not sure why I took it.
The finished device actually projects a recognizable, yet dim image.
I could increase the amount of light, or make an LED array that worked off a portable power source, but really, I don’t want to put any more work into this. It will be something neat yet useless in the corner of the next Space Squid party.