lcd screen for diy projector free sample

Making your own homemade smartphone projector is a fun project that you can do with all the family. You will learn about how optics work and develop your creativity, as well as recycling the boxes you have at home.

To build this projector, we will place a mirror and a magnifying lens in a box to make the light rays coming from your phone create a bigger projected image. The more light reaches the magnifying glass, the brighter your final image would be. For that reason, you want to have a relatively narrow box to avoid light dispersion before reaching the glass.

You need a long box so that you can adjust the distance between the projecting lens and your phone. With that in mind, you need to use a box that your phone’s screen will fit across. In my case, I took a box 16x31x12 cm.

Light reflecting off from the walls of the box would cause noise and can result in lower image quality. To avoid that, you should make the inner sides of the projector black. You can coat the inside of the projector by glueing black matte paper.

The lens projects images from the phone by concentrating and refracting the light. This means that the image we get on the wall is flipped upside down and left to right. Fixing the first is easy. All you have to do is to deactivate the phone’s screen auto-rotate option and place the phone upside down.

Measure the width and length of your phone’s screen. Draw a rectangle with your phone screen size on the lid of the projector, right above the mirror.

Fit the magnifying glass into the hole you cut out in step 3. And with that, you are done!  You’ve made your very own smartphone projector. If you want, you can decorate it using paints, colorful papers or any other materials you have around.

To set up your projector, place it in front of a white wall or a screen. Turn your phone’s brightness to maximum and place it facing down on top of the cut-out opening you’ve made. I recommend you to turn off the auto-rotate and set the screen sleep time to “Never”. Next, turn off all the lights in the room, the projector should be the only light source.

Start sliding the lens slowly away from the mirror while looking at the image on the wall.  Stop moving the lens when you get a sharp image. You might need to change the distance between the wall and the projector if the image is not sharp enough.

If you don’t have a mirror available, you can still make a projector. Place your phone with the image upside down directly in front of the lens. To keep the phone secured in its position, I recommend attaching it with a Velcro. This will also make taking the phone out easier.

Without the mirror, your smart phone projector won´t correct the inversion of the image. For that reason, I recommend you avoid anything with writing.

The idea behind a projector is that light rays coming from your phone pass through a magnifying lens placed in a certain distance. This creates a bigger projected image. This image will be inverted, but this can be fixed by placing a mirror between the phone and the lens.

You need a convex lens to build a homemade projector. These lenses are bigger in the center than on their edges. The easiest way to get a convex lens is to use a magnifying glass. You can remove the holder and place it in your projector.

Most projectors have a zoom ring to enlarge the image. If you have a homemade projector, you probably won’t have a zoom ring.  The easiest way to make the screen bigger is by placing the projector further. You might need to readjust the focus by moving the phone back and forth.

Image projectors with lenses exist since 1659 when Christiaan Huygens invented the magic lantern. Eadweard Muybridge invented in 1879 the first projector used with moving images. Although Edison built his movie projector in 1894, the first successful one was invented by the Lumière brothers one year later.

Building your own projector is a fun DIY project that you can do either by yourself or with the whole family. Although it is not a professional projector and might not produce a perfect image, it gives a pretty nice result. You can use it as a neat little gadget for your kid’s birthday party or create special effects for Halloween. This project is a fun way for kids to learn about lenses and light and an excellent way to re-utilize materials.

Feeling indecisive? We understand that picking a projection screen is a big commitment, whether you"re building a state of the art event or home theater projector screen, simple projection tv screen for your bedroom, or anything in-between! We offer the biggest projector screen material samples on the market, so we can help you narrow down your ideal projection screen material.

FlexiWhite (FW): An excellent material for all-around use, it"s flexible and easy to fold for storage in-between uses (and readily stretches back out again to get rid of fold lines and wrinkles), making it a very versatile projection screen material! Easy to install over wood frames, it"s a popular choice as a hanging projector screen. Its PVC construction makes it popular with the outdoor crowd as well!

Ambient Light Rejecting (ALR): Our Ambient Light Rejecting (ALR) screen material is really special. It"s colored a dark gray for maximum contrast from your projector, while its shiny surface helps keep colors bright. It"s very popular in multipurpose rooms where light is difficult to control. Avoid folding because while a flexible material, it isn"t quite as resilient as the other flexible materials. Also, use caution when pairing with a short throw projector or with edge-blending because of the possibility of inconsistent image brightness.

FlexiWhite (FW): An excellent material for all-around use, it"s flexible and easy to fold for storage in-between uses (and readily stretches back out again to get rid of fold lines and wrinkles), making it a very versatile projection screen material! Easy to install over wood frames, it"s a popular choice as a hanging projector screen. Its PVC construction makes it popular with the outdoor crowd as well!

Ultra-White (UW): Similar to ProWhite but a better picture in just about every way. Very smooth, very matte and can make most projectors display a picture with unparalleled clarity and uniformity.

ProWhite (PW): Typically used in roll-down applications, it hangs flatter than other materials all by itself but can"t be folded for storage as it has a stiffer structure that will kink when bent too sharply. Recommended for use for limited installation options where stretching might not be possible.

Ambient Light Rejecting (ALR): Our Ambient Light Rejecting (ALR) screen material is really special. It"s colored a dark gray for maximum contrast from your projector, while its shiny surface helps keep colors bright. It"s very popular in multipurpose rooms where light is difficult to control. Avoid folding because while a flexible material, it isn"t quite as resilient as the other flexible materials. Also, use caution when pairing with a short throw projector or with edge-blending because of the possibility of inconsistent image brightness.

Ultra-Gray (UG):With the same features as UltraWhite, our light-gray Ultra option is a premium version of the Pro series with a smoother screen texture for a higher quality image.

White Rear Film (WR): Very similar to our gray rear film, our white rear film is more opaque, which helps make the images more uniform when paired with brighter projectors. Slightly dimmer than gray rear film but more even in its light distribution, making it a great choice in dark environments.

Gray Rear Film (GR): Translucent and slightly gray, it will give you the brightest image available in a rear projection material, which is great for environments with some ambient light. In dark environments, however, care must be taken to avoid hotspots. Avoid projectors that are too bright or that project in direct line-of-sight to the viewer.

Standard Golf Impact Screens (IS): Perfect for beginners or first-timers – an inexpensive impact screen for golf. Budget-friendly projection screen for golf simulators. Use with real golf balls up to 250 MPH.

Preferred Golf Impact Screen (PD): Best value for both home and commercial users looking for higher quality. Much smoother texture than Standard with tightly woven fibers for better HD picture. Use with real golf balls up to 250 MPH with an indoor golf simulator.

Premium Golf Impact Screen (PM): The smoothest surface available on a full impact material. Made of three layers of heavy-duty, tight-knit impact resistant polyester. Quiets noise from the golf ball hitting the screen with a cushioned center layer. Recommended where image quality is the top concern.

An LCD projector is a type of video projector for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or other flat surface. It is a modern equivalent of the slide projector or overhead projector. To display images, LCD (liquid-crystal display) projectors typically send light from a metal-halide lamp through a prism or series of dichroic filters that separates light to three polysilicon panels – one each for the red, green and blue components of the video signal. As polarized light passes through the panels (combination of polarizer, LCD panel and analyzer), individual pixels can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light. The combination of open and closed pixels can produce a wide range of colors and shades in the projected image.

Metal-halide lamps are used because they output an ideal color temperature and a broad spectrum of color. These lamps also have the ability to produce an extremely large amount of light within a small area; current projectors average about 2,000 to 15,000 American National Standards Institute (ANSI) lumens.

Because they use small lamps and the ability to project an image on any flat surface, LCD projectors tend to be smaller and more portable than some other types of projection systems. Even so, the best image quality is found using a blank white, grey, or black (which blocks reflected ambient light) surface, so dedicated projection screens are often used.

Perceived color in a projected image is a factor of both projection surface and projector quality. Since white is more of a neutral color, white surfaces are best suited for natural color tones; as such, white projection surfaces are more common in most business and school presentation environments.

However, darkest black in a projected image is dependent on how dark the screen is. Because of this, some presenters and presentation-space planners prefer gray screens, which create higher-perceived contrast. The trade-off is that darker backgrounds can throw off color tones. Color problems can sometimes be adjusted through the projector settings, but may not be as accurate as they would on a white background.

Early experiments with liquid crystals to generate a video image were done by John A. van Raalte at the RCA-Laboratories in 1968.CRT with a modified faceplate to generate a charge pattern on its surface. No practical application of this concept for projection purposes is known. However, a similar concept was used for print heads without an LCD.

The first experiments with a direct-driven, transmissive matrix-addressed LCD using a converted slide projector by Peter J. Wild working at Brown Boveri Research in Switzerland were conducted in 1971. A projector was shown in operation at the SID Conference 1972 in San Francisco.thin-film transistors) at the matrix intersections) were not capable of displaying images with sufficient resolution for video pictures, a combination of a fixed image together with an LCD matrix for the variable elements was proposed as an LC projector for certain control room applications,

A lot of effort went into optimizing thin-film transistors (TFT) suitable for active matrix-addressed (AM) LCDs. The concept was invented and early trials were conducted by teams at RCA and Westinghouse Electric. T Peter Brody left Westinghouse and founded Panelvision in 1981 to manufacture AM LCDs. Breakthroughs occurred elsewhere in new materials and thin-film structures, with Hitachi of Japan as a pioneering company. Such AM LCDs became commercially available in the early 1980s.

Gene Dolgoff had the idea of using LCDs as light valves in projectors. However, he had to wait until 1984 to get a digitally-addressable LCD matrix device with sufficient resolution and contrast, which is when he completed building his LCD video projector. After building it, he saw many problems that had to be corrected including major light losses and very noticeable pixels (sometimes referred to as the "screen-door effect"). He then invented new optical methods to create efficient and bright projectors and invented depixelization to reduce the screen-door effect.

At about the same time, the German company "Bonner Ingenieurbüro für Optoelektronik CrystalVision" started experimenting with LCD projection devices from 1985 onwards. Although traditional slide projectors already used infrared filters to reduce heating of the photographic slides, LCDs are much more sensitive to overheating. When the temperature in the nematic liquid crystal layer reaches the "clearing point" (i.e. enters the isotropic phase), the LC light valve does not work anymore until the temperature drops below again. Bernt Haastert, an engineer working at CrystalVision, found out, that placing the required polarizing filters at a certain distance on both sides of the LC cell allowed for efficient air cooling of the arrangement.

With patents filed worldwide (filing his first LCD video projector patent application in 1987), Dolgoff started Projectavision, Inc. in 1988, as one of the world"s first dedicated LCD-projector companies, which he took public on Nasdaq in 1990. He licensed the technology to other companies including Panasonic and Samsung. Early pioneers of LCD projection in Japan were Epson and Sharp,

In 1989, Projectavision, Inc. was awarded the first Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract – for US$1 million – for proposing that the United States high-definition television (HDTV) standard should use digital processing and projection. As a member of the National Association of Photographic Manufacturers Standards Subcommittee, IT7-3, Dolgoff along with Leon Shapiro, co-developed the worldwide ANSI standard for measurement of brightness, contrast, and resolution of electronic projectors.

Since 2005,Epson and Sony. Epson owns the technology and has branded it as "3LCD". To market 3LCD projector technology, Epson also set up a consortium called the "3LCD Group" in 2005 with other projector manufacturer licensees of 3LCD technology that use it in their projector models.

Early LCD systems were used with existing overhead projectors. The LCD system did not have a light source of its own: it was built on a large "plate" that sat on top of the projector in place of transparencies. This provided a stop-gap solution in the era when the computer was not yet a universal display medium, creating a market for LCD projectors before their current main use became popular.

This technology was employed in some sizes of rear-projection television consoles when there was a cost advantages in mid-size sets (40- to 50-inch diagonal). In 2014, 60-inch 1080p flat panel televisions were less costly than a projector with 1080p native resolution. Projection systems were typically marketed as offering a diagonal image size of 100 to 300 inches.

In 2004 and 2005, LCD front projection began a comeback with the introduction of the dynamic iris and other modifications that have improved perceived contrast to levels similar to DLP.

The basic design of an LCD projector is frequently used by hobbyists who build their own DIY (do-it-yourself) projection systems. The basic technique is to combine a high color-rendering index (CRI) high-intensity discharge lamp (HID lamp) and ballast with a condenser and collector Fresnel lens, an LCD removed from a common computer display and a triplet lens.

P.J. Wild, Matrix-addressed liquid crystal projection display, Digest of Technical Papers, International Symposium, Society for Information Display, June 1972, pp. 62-63

Fischetti, Mark (November 2007). "Two Technologies Shine". Two technologies – micromirrors and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) – have been vying for these markets, but they are doing equally well in today"s home and business areas....

and a screen the image will also increase. If your projector has a zoom lens, the lens can be adjusted to change the size of the screen image without changing

the distance of the projector. Since each projector lens is different, an online projection calculator tool will help you calculate the size of an image

A short throw projector is a projector with a lens that has a throw ratio of 0.4 (distance/width) or less. These projectors are ideal for rear screen applications

where the area behind the screen is limited, or for a wall mounted application where the projector will be mounted within 1 or 2 feet from the screen. The

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Unlike TVs, projectors are actually one part of a multipart system. The screen, room, and projector all play a role in the final image you see. A projector can be perfectly accurate (more on this below), but the image can still look wrong because of how the screen is affecting it. The main factors we considered when testing a projection screen were: gain, color accuracy, viewing angle, and texture.

Gain is a measurement of how much light the screen reflects. A gain of 1.0 means it reflects the same amount of light as an industry standard white magnesium-oxide board. Screens can reflect less light and have a gain of less than 1.0, or more light and have a gain higher than 1.0. A lower gain will produce deeper, darker blacks but reduce overall image brightness. In the early days of digital projection, this was useful because projectors had terrible (read: grayish) blacks. But that is less of an issue now with most decent projectors.

A higher gain, made possible by special screen materials, reflects more light back toward the center of the room. This creates a brighter image, but it also reduces viewing angles and can introduce hot spots (areas of the image that are noticeably brighter than other areas). It used to be that a higher gain was necessary, but as projectors have gotten more powerful, today a gain of 1.0 is often sufficient.

Color accuracy measures how well the screen reflects the colors projected onto it. The makeup of the screen can result in certain colors being absorbed more than others and introduce a tint to the image that isn’t coming from the projector. Many projectors ship with picture modes that are close to accurate out of the box, but those might no longer be accurate after they hit the screen. A screen that introduces as little color shifting as possible is ideal. The two images below show the same image on two different screen materials. You can easily see the color shifts between the two and the problems a screen can introduce.

At left is Goo Systems" Screen Goo paint, and at right is Elite Screens" Sable. Note the warm, red tint to the Screen Goo, while the Elite has a cool, blue tint. Photo: Chris Heinonen

Viewing angles influence how wide you can sit from the center of the screen before the light noticeably drops off. With a gain of 1.0, the viewing angle can be close to 180 degrees, since it reflects everything more or less equally in all directions. With a higher gain, the viewing angle gets smaller, as you are in essence “focusing” the reflected light more toward the center of the room. With a high-gain screen, you’ll want to put seats closer to the center of the screen.

The texture of the screen also impacts how much detail you can see. If a screen’s texture is evident from a usual seating distance, it will alter the image quality and possibly your enjoyment. If the screen material is very fine, then you will not see any texture from a normal viewing distance, so the image appears smooth.

Almost all of the screen reviews out there are of expensive screens, so we had to start from scratch. I first went to the AccuCal Projection Screen Material Report. W. Jeff Maier of AccuCal has tested samples of many screen materials using high-end equipment to determine their color accuracy and actual gain. Since he is dealing with only samples of the materials (often 8½- by 11-inch pieces) that he is sent through the mail, the report doesn’t go into construction or installation of the screens themselves.

Next, my research turned to the main AVSForum and other resources. Here the screen conversations range from the top-of-the-line Stewart to a DIY option for $3 from Home Depot. There are also many small Internet Direct companies that would otherwise go unnoticed without discussions at AVS and other locations.

We also pored over reviews from Amazon, making sure to carefully read what people actually complained about. I also talked to other reviewers and calibrators to find out what they might have used and seen in their work that impressed them, even if they had not formally reviewed that particular screen.

After all that, we set out to review 100-inch, 16:9 screens, as close to 1.0 gain as possible. We figured this was a good-size, average screen that would work for most people. You can certainly go larger, though the image will be dimmer (by an amount equal to the increase in screen area). Since most modern home theater projectors won’t have an issue creating a bright image on a 100-inch screen (and most can even do larger), we didn’t feel anything higher than a 1.0 gain was necessary. Since most content is 16:9, that was also our preferred screen shape, though many companies make 2.35:1-shaped screens as well.

We didn’t test pull-down screens or ambient-light-rejecting materials unless we already had a sample around. Those are more specialized cases, and we were looking for the screen that would be best for the greatest number of people in a semi-permanent home setting.

We were looking for a roughly 100-inch, 1.0-gain, 16:9 screen that had very little color shift, no noticeable texture, good viewing angles, and easy installation and setup. And, ideally, was very inexpensive.

So to sum up, we were looking for a roughly 100-inch, 1.0-gain, 16:9 screen that had very little color shift, no noticeable texture, good viewing angles, and easy installation and setup—and, ideally, was very inexpensive. With that in mind, we ended up bringing in the Silver Ticket STR Series 100″, the Elite Screens SableFrame 2 100″ in CineWhite, the 100-inch Stewart StudioTek 130 and Cima Neve 1.1 screens, three 120-inch screen materials (blackout cloth, FlexiWhite, and FlexiGray) from Carl’s Place, Wilsonart Designer White laminate in an 8- by 4-foot sheet, Goo Systems" Screen Goo Reference White and GooToob, and Home Depot"s Behr Silver Screen. I also included in the testing my personal screen, a 122-inch Screen Innovations SolarHD 4K.

The Stewart and Screen Innovations screens are much more expensive models that are often sold only through custom AV retailers, but we still included them in our tests as references for comparison. Stewart is the best-selling screen brand for custom home theaters, and the StudioTek 130 is the company"s best-selling material. It is the reference standard for a home theater screen and the one most reviewers are likely to recommend if you ask for a single suggestion; I use it when testing projectors. In our tests of screens, we wanted to make sure to pit everything against this reference to see how well they performed.

These screens are designed to be flown or suspended from above. In addition to screens, the agile Acrobat motorized lift is available to facilitate flying screens and more.

Additional Draper projection screens not shown on this page can be used in flown applications. Please contact your sales representative to discuss your specific needs.

To facilitate raising and lowering Draper screens and other eqiupment, we offer the powerful and versatile Acrobat lift. Acrobat’s lifting mechanism improves function and serviceability in areas with tall ceilings. Acrobat was specifically designed to lift our Paragon, Targa XL, Premier XL, and StageScreen projection screens, and much more. With a 1,000-pound (454 kg) lifting capacity, Acrobat can be also used to lift a variety of other products such as scoreboards, lighting systems, and speakers. Travel range up to 34" (10 m).

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