In the claws of a vulture: Nebra AnyBeam Laser Projector Those seeking a bit of portable projector fun will shortly have a tiny option in the form of the Nebra AnyBeam, a pocket-sized laser for flinging images onto a handy surface. With its funding campaign complete, The Register took a look at the miniaturised neighbour-annoyer to see if, well, it actually worked. Hardware Four …
I've never understood why someone hasn't developed a proper laser projector ...
1) We've got RGB lasers now ...
2) The floating mirror scanning mechanism is surely able to deliver a scanning speed OK for at least SDTV
3) You could use LCD filters to adjust the brightness
They do. They're not brilliant as you get RGB strobing during fast, non-saccade eye movements, but that could be sorted with a little inventiveness in the optics. And you don't need LCD shutters to adjust intensity; lasers can be modulated way faster than liquid crystals - down to femto-seconds. Multiple scan beams is another way to improve resolution, by dividing the screen up into different chunks you aren't creating as much flicker, which the non-peripheral vision is more sensitive to.
The efficiency of visible color lasers used to be really awful, like 0.05%. Laser light show tubes were enormous, required insane manufacturing precision, and were still only bright enough for simple raster art in a dark room. It took a long time to invent powerful and efficient laser diodes that are either usable RGB colors or have a frequency that can be converted to them.
If you had children who would otherwise spend all their time complaining about how bored they are?
If you decided to have movie night with your friends, but outside?
There's two answers I came up with in less time than they took to type, I'm sure if you actually used your brain you'd think of some more.
"If you had children who would otherwise spend all their time complaining about how bored they are?"
I was camping a few days ago, with my family. The offspring needed entertaining, so we played frizbee. If I was going to let them vegetate in their sleeping bag with a TV, we might as well have stayed at home. The TV's bigger and better there.
Many reasons and the main one depends on what you mean by camping and hiking. One of the reasons im seriously thinking about this is training. We do quite a bit of outdoor ed, we already take a laptop with us (a rather aged dell rugged thing that really hasnt died). We teach in a few outdoor places such as Black Sail Hut, Skiddaw House and "somewhere roundabout Caldbeck" depending on the weather and the number of pupils. This sort of projector might work depending on exactly HOW dark it needs to be - students would be making notes but not many. The places we go have no power other than what you bring and thats the beauty.
As for camping, I personally do two sorts, one to get away from it all and one to get away from the city. The latter sometimes involves electric tent pitch, laptop and such. With a projector we can sit around at night whilst the kids watch netflix (somewhere like ParkFoot in Ullswater has excellent 4G), this is a holiday not a prison camp so we always have a variety of things to do, we also go camping with family so there are lots of age groups adn we tend to keep ourselves away from others so we can sit out late at night without disturbing others.
Why would you take a projector camping or hiking?
Because you can and your neighbour, no matter how new their car is won't have one. As well as the fact you need stuff, you know like all the other essentials: V8 diesel generator, UPS units, Satellite uplink, enough solar panels to power a blast furnace, those water pumps with carbon filters that can purify water from a puddle.
Personally... I'd hook it up to my Canon EOS camera body, which is attached to my telescope.
Just because you're "camping" doesn't mean you don't need entertainment, can't benefit from technology, and aren't just "on a cheaper kind of holiday".
I would happily camp with nothing more advanced than a box of matches and a tent. But equally I always take my smartphone, and things get dark much earlier in the middle of nowhere than in your artificially-illuminated home. Snuggle up in a sleeping bag, project a Netflix episode of something on the side of the tent before you go to sleep.
Camping isn't always minimalistic. In fact, it's infinitely more enjoyable to have at least some tech (e.g. artificial lights, camping stoves, smartphone/GPS with pre-loaded OS maps, etc. etc.)
I've not been involved with projectors for a few years now, but my abiding memories are the expensive bulbs and their short lives. Are bulbs cheaper and more long lasting now or might the TCO of a more expensive laser based one that doesn't need regular light source replacements be lower in the long run?
We used to use a ceiling mounted projector for our main TV. We went through two different projector brands with mixed success.
The lamps started to get very dim after about 1 to 1 1/2 years. The OEM lamps were about $290 each, and aftermarket lamps were $170. The aftermarket lamps lasted 1/2 to 2/3 as long as OEM, so not any cheaper in the long run.
We went to a large LCD TV when the prices came way down. I'm not sure I would ever go back. You need to keep the room dark, no matter how good the projector is. You just don't get good contrast unless the room is completely dark.
Someone I work with tried one of the new laser projectors for their church, and found that the brightness was not good enough, and exchanged it for one with a regular lamp. I helped him choose the projector, and based on my experience with lamps, suggested he try the laser one. We both really wanted the laser projector to work, but it just didn't have the brightness.
I've seen some YouTube videos where people have hacked projectors and replaced the mercury lamps with LED modules. They seem to have good success. One person put in a 100W LED module, and it was significantly brighter than with the original lamp. It makes you wonder why projector manufacturers aren't doing the same?
This post has been deleted by its author
Yes, mixing units does nobody any favours and when you see it in sales hype it smells of something to hide.
What the marketroids meant to put on the spec sheet was that from 5 m away you can project a 3.8 m (diagonal, I assume?) image.
That actually would make for quite impressive viewing in an average sized living room.
Get two small hobby motors, some plastic mirror you can cut into small circles to mount on the motor shafts, and a decent laser modules. Let each mirror bend the beam path through 90 deg, run up your motors and watch the lissajous diagrams form on whatever you point the rig at.
Bonus points for operation in smoke or fog.
Lose points for lasing aircraft.
It's a great kiddo project; definitely a weapon of mass distraction
We're talking about tiny video projectors, are we? Small ones, that one can hold in one hand? That accept digital video input, or video via USB?
You know, I have one of those. It's quite handy, works pretty damn' well. Uses LEDs to form an image. Bright, crispy. I bought it TEN YEARS AGO.
[sigh]
Really, you have a focus free projector from 10 years ago that does 720pnative res and get 150 lumens? I just had a quick look on Amazon at pocket projectors and the first one I found is "1080p" with a native res of only 854x480 at 100 lumens and still needs focus. And costs £200. The next one claims 3500 lumens till you look at the proper specs then it says 150 ansi lumens.
And they both have contrast ratios of only 1000:1. Not like this with 80000:1. Neither mention keystone adjustment either.
And that's for £200 projectors today. Not 10 years ago.
So, if you want to sigh about higher res, better contrast&brightness and the focus free technology, because you have something similar but much less good, you must spend a lot of your life sighing. It'd probably be good for your mental wellbeing to be more excited by advances in technology and appreciative of performance increases.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
