heyjosh.net

The LCD panel for my projector project arrived today.  Yay!  First things first, I tested to make sure it was functional:

It works.  Good deal.  Now let’s break it!  Point of no return right here.  If anything goes wrong, the panel is toast.  If everything goes right, it will still never be an LCD monitor ever again, there’s no putting it back together.  Pause.  Take a deep breath.  Consider the ramifications.  Think of the children.  Okay now think of that 9 foot screen.  Eff the ramifications!

Okay, let’s start by removing the big white strip with red lettering that says “Don’t Touch!” in not one, but two languages.  Yeah.  Yeah, that’s gotta go.  Basically every piece of adhesive tape around the outside has to go, but that one has to go first.  Because it’s lippy.

The lippy bilingual warning has been squelched.  There was a piece of it that is glued to the circuit board where the video cable connects.  I cut around that with a hobby knife.  Next, carefully remove every other piece of adhesive tape, lifting the corners with the hobby knife and peeling with light, even pressure.

Done.  Well, not really.  But as done as I can get without a screwdriver.  Off to Meijer’s at 2:15AM to buy some little screwdrivers, because that backlight has to come out next.  I’m replacing that sucker with a 4000 lumens monster backlight

Screwdrivers acquired.  I got it apart.  The backlight was stubborn.  Turns out it’s attached by adhesive along the bottom, right where that fragile ribbon cable is.  Pulling that off was scary, but once you get an end started it’s fairly easy overall.

Bam, blacklight removed.  Screen is less transparent than expected.  WOOPS, research landmine.  If I had done my homework a little better, I’d have known already that the LCD will only pass 10% of the light directed at it.  That turns my 4000 Lumens projector into a 400   Once the dust is settled on this, it will be time to shop around for a better one.  They get up to 11000 lumens, so I could conceivably reach some respectable brightness.  In the meantime, it’ll be best in a dark room.  Which is okay for me, I sleep during the day.

Bonus – the entire thing is framed up nicely by a piece of aluminum.  This piece will make an excellent guide for the frame I’ll need to hold it.  I plan on taking this sucker to Hobby Lobby and having them make me a 1″x0.5″ picture frame custom sized so that this piece slips right in where the glass, photo and backing would go.

In the meantime, the fragile LCD panel is put away in a cat-safe location, between two pieces of the flat packing foamboard that it shipped in.  Next stop:  Hobby Lobby.  No, I don’t trust myself to build a correct and straight frame

Total investment so far:  approximately $450

I want a big hi-def screen.  I don’t want to pay an insane amount of money for a TV.  To me, anything over five or six hundred dollars is an insane amount of money to spend on a TV.  Since there aren’t any big-screens in my price range, I’m building one.

I saw blog posts showing geeks putting together their own big-screens using a standard overhead projector and a budget LCD display panel designed for overheads, whole thing costing $200 or less.  So what would happen if I threw in a little more money on better parts?  We’re going to find out.

Bought a 3M 9550 off eBay.  This projector was chosen because of it’s high output (4000 lumens), acceptable bulb price ($10-$15 ea), and triplex lens head (more/better glass, for sharper images).  It shipped with two dead bulbs, so it’s been sitting idle in my house for about a week.  Tonight I got working bulbs, fired it up and did some testing.

I picked up a Sharp QA-1500 for cheap (also from eBay).  It was one of those $5 winning bids.  If the gamble paid off, I’d have a standard-definition projection screen TV right away to use while working on the better model.  The gamble did not pay off.

So I cut out a mask that is the exact size of the 10.1″ LCD panel I plan to order, to get an idea of picture size and brightness:

That’s juuuuust shy of a 90″ picture, and that’s a lit room.  Final video picture will be quite a bit darker, because you lose light to the LCD panel.  But this is a plenty good start.  Now, off to the lab to build the housing that will hold the panel in place, and cool the projector bed.  More later.  Total investment so far:  $105.