Well, the seat and rig is basicly as good as its going to be without spending silly money, so I turned my attention to what else I could achieve with a little inginuity.
So, enter, the home made projector!
Made from the rather comical combination of a 15" LCD display, and an old school OHP (remember them from school?) and a small desk fan to keep it all cool, the whole thing took a week or so of not very committed tinkering to get it to this stage.
Resolution is XVGA (1024x768) so not HD, but pretty good for general viewing and with a response time as fast as a normal display. Screen size is anywhere from about 5-6ft (as in the pic) to about 9ft, depending on how far away you put the thing from the wall. 5-6ft screen size is best as it doesnt get washed out as much.
Future improvements include building a shroud to reduce the light bleeding from the whole contraption. Its equivalent to having a small desk lamp on in the viewing area, which is far from ideal for the overall effect.
Total cost $100.
This pic is just on the wall of the room my rig is in. I leant a 15" screen surround on the wall at the bottom of the image for scale. This pic doesnt really show the brightness well (looks twice as bright in real life) and the image neatly captured a scene from Monsters Inc, where all the characters on the screen were moving so fast that they werent captured! Still, it was in focus, unlike all the other attempts I made at taking a photo!
Latest rig addition, work in progress
- Wildboy99
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
wow thats awesome mate. better then spending a few grand on a real projector. OHP been a over head projector? I dont know too much about this sorta stuff, howd did you actually do it?
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Yeah mate exactly, an overhead projector. A bit cumbersome, but for the price you cant grumble too much.
The rest of it is pretty easy. Take one old LCD monitor (a 15" in my case) dismantle until you have just the LCD screen with all the electrics still connnected up. Place the LCD screen on the projector, plug it all in, and stick a fan next to it to keep the screen cool (they dont like the heat from the OHP). Thats it! Im in the process of tidying it all up at the moment, but essentially thats all just to make it look a bit better, and to make it easier to move around.
LCD screens are actually transparent, the only reason they look solid is that there is a big flat back light behind them. Take away the casing and the back light, and you could look straight through an operating LCD screen like a stained glass window.
Down side is its pretty large, and theres no keystone correction (used if the projector doesnt point straight at the wall to make the sides of the projected image parallel), and because of the two fans running (one in the OHP and the other outside) it is probably slightly noiser than a normal projector. It soon blends into the background though and placement options can be solved using a bit of thinking or furniture rearranging when you want to use it!
The rest of it is pretty easy. Take one old LCD monitor (a 15" in my case) dismantle until you have just the LCD screen with all the electrics still connnected up. Place the LCD screen on the projector, plug it all in, and stick a fan next to it to keep the screen cool (they dont like the heat from the OHP). Thats it! Im in the process of tidying it all up at the moment, but essentially thats all just to make it look a bit better, and to make it easier to move around.
LCD screens are actually transparent, the only reason they look solid is that there is a big flat back light behind them. Take away the casing and the back light, and you could look straight through an operating LCD screen like a stained glass window.
Down side is its pretty large, and theres no keystone correction (used if the projector doesnt point straight at the wall to make the sides of the projected image parallel), and because of the two fans running (one in the OHP and the other outside) it is probably slightly noiser than a normal projector. It soon blends into the background though and placement options can be solved using a bit of thinking or furniture rearranging when you want to use it!
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- kumarakid
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Wow Dyno, absolutely brilliant. You must have a very busy mind bro....awesome!
- 4aged
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
thats awesome man, great work...hmm i have a 15" lcd lying around as well...no room for it though. great concept though, would be easy to do without a OHP as well i bet.
are you just uisng a normal OHB bulb?
are you just uisng a normal OHB bulb?
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Not sure youd get too far without some kind of projection unit, thats what actually makes and focuses the image. I cant think off hand what you could use instead of an OHP? The OHP I have just has its standard halogen bulb in it, not sure of the rating mind you!
I just set it up to project infront of my rig and played around with the view and settings for a while. Best set up was widesreen mode, custom view over the front of the car so you can just see the bonnet but nothing else, and a wide FOV. Flippin brilliant fun, but I found it quite hard to get decent lap times, because of the sense of speed!
However, the resolution im playing at is so much lower than the 1920x1080p with the 24" monitor I use, so its quite a trade off. I think for actual competitve racing I prefer the 24" monitor. I have it set up so close to me that if it were mounted on the wall, it would be around a 50" screen relative size, plus its brighter, and higher res. The larger 80" screen I get with the projector is great, but the trade off with less than half the number of pixels and the brightness being lower means its probably only going to get used for single player or if I have mates round.
I think long term itll end up being for the 'movie nights' and occaisional widescreen LFSing. I might change my mind once ive shrouded it all up.
Heres a pic of the unit so you can see the setup. The post box at the side is a fan I mounted up so that it directs the flow out of the slot at the top to blow across and under the screen. Still quite Heath Robinson at the moment, but itll be much nicer and complete once im done.
I just set it up to project infront of my rig and played around with the view and settings for a while. Best set up was widesreen mode, custom view over the front of the car so you can just see the bonnet but nothing else, and a wide FOV. Flippin brilliant fun, but I found it quite hard to get decent lap times, because of the sense of speed!
However, the resolution im playing at is so much lower than the 1920x1080p with the 24" monitor I use, so its quite a trade off. I think for actual competitve racing I prefer the 24" monitor. I have it set up so close to me that if it were mounted on the wall, it would be around a 50" screen relative size, plus its brighter, and higher res. The larger 80" screen I get with the projector is great, but the trade off with less than half the number of pixels and the brightness being lower means its probably only going to get used for single player or if I have mates round.
I think long term itll end up being for the 'movie nights' and occaisional widescreen LFSing. I might change my mind once ive shrouded it all up.
Heres a pic of the unit so you can see the setup. The post box at the side is a fan I mounted up so that it directs the flow out of the slot at the top to blow across and under the screen. Still quite Heath Robinson at the moment, but itll be much nicer and complete once im done.
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- Wildboy99
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
wicked, thanks for explaining that i thought that would be how youd do it just never had a reason to pull apart a LCD panel before so wasnt sure.
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Nice one dyno, I saw this a while ago and have been trying to get ideas for something similar. Could you foresee any problems with running two of these side by side (like a dual monitor setup with no frame)? What is the brightness like during the day? Impossible to use without curtains drawn?
I managed to score two identical 19" monitors, one without a working backlight. As they are too large to fit on most OHPs I've been trying to source some fresnel and triple lenses to construct my own projection unit. It costs around 60USD just to ship them into the country though. Anyone know if these can be purchased in NZ? I've done trademe and google searches and not found anything.
What I'm hoping for is two identical units to each project half of a 2560x1024 pixel display. If I could also get a curved screen to project it onto (and use the lfs settings to keep perspectives correct) it would be quite immersive.
I managed to score two identical 19" monitors, one without a working backlight. As they are too large to fit on most OHPs I've been trying to source some fresnel and triple lenses to construct my own projection unit. It costs around 60USD just to ship them into the country though. Anyone know if these can be purchased in NZ? I've done trademe and google searches and not found anything.
What I'm hoping for is two identical units to each project half of a 2560x1024 pixel display. If I could also get a curved screen to project it onto (and use the lfs settings to keep perspectives correct) it would be quite immersive.
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Sorry Andre, I only just saw your post!
I would be a bit sceptical of your plans. the 19" monitors as you point out are too large to use on an OHP and you are incurring extra costs just to cope with this. With 15" monitors starting at the best part of $10 these days you may as well get two of those. I like the idea of an overlapping display using two OHPs. there shouldnt be a problem there. Same with projecting onto a curved screen. It would be very interesting to see the results. You would end up with a HUGE projected image though. Even with my projector only 3m from the wall you end up with a projected image of more than 3m wide such is the lens setup of OHPs.
Something to bear in mind though is that unlike most projectors, you have no ability to keystone correct the image, so you are very limited with the overall shape of the projected image. You need to be very flexible with regard to the mounting of the projectors.
There is no way that you can use these projectors in the daylight. You need absolute darkness. I had to use black out curtains in my room as normal ones let in too much light. However, if you are back projecting, then you may be able to use a smaller image size to increase the overall brightness.
Something im interested in experimenting with is back projecting onto a curved screen. Ive seen a DIY project use half a hemispherical skylight cover to back project onto.
I would be a bit sceptical of your plans. the 19" monitors as you point out are too large to use on an OHP and you are incurring extra costs just to cope with this. With 15" monitors starting at the best part of $10 these days you may as well get two of those. I like the idea of an overlapping display using two OHPs. there shouldnt be a problem there. Same with projecting onto a curved screen. It would be very interesting to see the results. You would end up with a HUGE projected image though. Even with my projector only 3m from the wall you end up with a projected image of more than 3m wide such is the lens setup of OHPs.
Something to bear in mind though is that unlike most projectors, you have no ability to keystone correct the image, so you are very limited with the overall shape of the projected image. You need to be very flexible with regard to the mounting of the projectors.
There is no way that you can use these projectors in the daylight. You need absolute darkness. I had to use black out curtains in my room as normal ones let in too much light. However, if you are back projecting, then you may be able to use a smaller image size to increase the overall brightness.
Something im interested in experimenting with is back projecting onto a curved screen. Ive seen a DIY project use half a hemispherical skylight cover to back project onto.
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Re: Latest rig addition, work in progress
Cheers for the reply. The reason I didn't mind too much about building my own projection unit was because cheap OHPs seem few and far between on TradeMe etc anyway, with a good supply at the $100+ mark. The downside to two units are that all the costs are doubled. Might just keep an eye out for any OHP bargains.
I put this project on hold because uni got busy and I figured out how to run LFS full-screen displaying 1920x1080 on the main monitor and 1280x1024 on the side monitor. Very pleased with how it looks and it is much more immersive than just a single monitor so that's keeping me satisfied for now.![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
Is anyone else running full-screen across dual monitors at completely different resolutions like this? When I was setting it up I couldn't find any info at all on how to do it so was wondering how common it is. I know with triple monitors softTH etc easily sorts it out.
I put this project on hold because uni got busy and I figured out how to run LFS full-screen displaying 1920x1080 on the main monitor and 1280x1024 on the side monitor. Very pleased with how it looks and it is much more immersive than just a single monitor so that's keeping me satisfied for now.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
Is anyone else running full-screen across dual monitors at completely different resolutions like this? When I was setting it up I couldn't find any info at all on how to do it so was wondering how common it is. I know with triple monitors softTH etc easily sorts it out.
I had a quick look around google on this and it looks very cool! Definitely something I'd be looking into if/when I get into this project again. Keep us posted if you have a dabble at this yourself.Something im interested in experimenting with is back projecting onto a curved screen. Ive seen a DIY project use half a hemispherical skylight cover to back project onto.
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