Pico Projector – Experimental Engineering

Posted on July 14, 2012 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

ModMyPi Raspberry Pi Case

Finally, some protection for my Raspberry Pi! The PCB fit is slightly loose, but that was quickly sorted with the application of a couple of spots of hot glue in the corners.

Unfortunately, the case is a couple of mm too small to fit the main board from the Pico Projector inside, so I won’t be butchering that into the case with the Pi as yet. What is required is an interface to the display engine from the Pi’s DSI interface.

The pi all boxed. up. The only thing that this case would now require is a lightpipe to direct the LED’s light to the openings in the case, as they are very difficult to see at present.

Posted on July 10, 2012July 8, 2012 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

ShowWX+ Pico Projector First Light

Above is the image projected from the Pi, on the default login screen. Distance from the projector is approx 10 feet.

State of the art projector mount, fashioned from several cable ties. HDMI cable is plugged into the right hand side of the projector.

Unfortunately the projector cannot handle audio on the HDMI connector, the 3.5mm headphone jack on the projector is for splitting audio out of the iDevice connection only, and does not make the HDMI audio stream available.

The Raspberry Pi, hosting a USB keyboard, & USB powered speakers. Running the standard Debian release, on a 16GB card, with omxplayer installed for media functions.

Posted on July 7, 2012July 7, 2012 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

The Perfect Companion To The Raspberry Pi

As I’m building a portable “media center” with my first Pi, I was looking for a suitable screen. I remembered the existence of these:

A laser pico projector combined with a Pi, in a small enough package would make a fantastic
little portable media player. So £220 was shelled out 🙂

Along with the case for my Pi coming from Mod My Pi, I am aiming for a device as small as possible. At some point I will fit the Pi into the same package as the projector, if it can be cannibalised in such a way 🙂

Check back for an update with running images of the projector, powered from the Pi’s HDMI output.

I will also be doing the standard teardown of the projector when time allows 🙂

Bootnote:
Micro HDMI Connections: These are CRAP. They don’t stand up to any form of day-to-day use, and the projector began displaying a blue screen with “INVALID VIDEO MODE” as soon as anything was plugged into the Micro HDMI port. A quick attack with a jeweller’s screwdriver fixed the port, as it had become loose.