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Awesome CHEAP hypermarquee setup!

thenoob

By thenoob
in Cabinets and Projects

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thenoob Explorer

thenoob

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Hey wveryone

Been a minute since I’ve posted anything but check this out, have no idea if this has been posted here.

  Instead of buying those super expensive bar slim lcd’s for hypermarquee, this guy used regular plexi, rear projection film and a cheap pico rear projector.

    Simple, awesome and it works!

 

 

 

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thenoob Explorer

thenoob

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All he did was use a cheap 720p pico rear projector mounted behind the plexi

put projection film on the marquee plexi and connect the projector to the pc as the second monitor, and proceed to setup hypermarquee.

much better than a 600-900 monitor!!

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gigapig Community Regular

gigapig

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19 hours ago, ninja2bceen said:

Can someone create a video of this? How much is the projector, what kind?


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It's pretty simple and fiendishly clever. Buy projection film,  stick to plexiglass, position projector. 

I didn't think the image would fill the display very well, but his is very good. 

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wesfranks Newbie

wesfranks

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http://aaxatech.com/products/ST200-Short-Throw-LED-Pico-Projector.html  $279 from that site- out of stock or..... $546.44 on Amazon through a 3rd party reseller.

Operative wording for this application is "Short-Throw" or how close to the screen for a given size of picture. The farther away, the bigger the picture. Most results for short throw projectors were 1.5 meters for around a 30 inch or greater diagonal picture. That's almost 5 feet from the projector to the glass. Most arcades will not be that deep. A few were 1.2 meters. Any closer and you would probably have issues with picture focus, as well as picture size.

There was an ultra short throw class of projectors, but the ones I saw were about $1200 and up.

OP may have picked the best of the bunch for the price(although some research may lead to alternatives). His projector model shows 17 inch diag picture at 1 foot distance which he decreased further by bouncing off a mirror. But that is still $279 and currently out of stock.

BTW, info was in his youtube comments aka not makin' this up.

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wesfranks Newbie

wesfranks

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Oh and the rear projection film he used for the glass is standard Fedex shipping charge of $40 to a US address for a 60 inch x 12 inch sheet of film. Shipping is almost as much as the cost of the rp sheet.

But they will do 1-day shipping for an additional charge. Is it just me or is that a lot for shipping?

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ninja2bceen Contributor

ninja2bceen

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All very interesting, I’ve been wanting a virtual marquee but they are crazy expensive and like you said only have about a foot of space length wise to project. This seems dead in its tracks for me all unless there is a micro projector somewhere?


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wesfranks Newbie

wesfranks

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Yeah, if you want to shoot on a wall it's doable, especially if you are willing to deal with reduced picture quality. The improvements in LED light tech has brought the size down and increased the lifespan of the light. Got me thinking about future plans for that.

But with this scenario, your choices go way down since the optics have to spread the video out to an acceptable width and still be in focus. 3 to 5 feet is just too deep for a cabinet and the thought of aligning 4 or 5 mirrors to cut that distance sounds like a lot of work (exaggerating the issue, but...). 

With all them Santa and Halloween window projectors out there, a solution is likely right around the corner. Might be worth it to keep looking.

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wesfranks Newbie

wesfranks

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2 minutes ago, Bungles said:

Shooting onto wall or mounted plexi-glass as gigapig as shown would be great for Posters, Controls Animations etc in a gaming room.

Given me a lot to think about.

 

I know. Wish touchscreen was cheaper for bigger. This could be a crazy project, especially with your other project. Arcade "Minority Report".

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ninja2bceen Contributor

ninja2bceen

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Ya the smallest thing I can find is this it’s 100 bucks. I have a marquee space for 31 inch across and 6 inch top to bottom. I have about say 8 inch in depth for something to just sit in there and project something. I’m not sure if the throw ratio can just have it sit 6 inch back and display that or not?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F222551619779


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hitchhikingflatlander Newbie

hitchhikingflatlander

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I'd love to own an Icarus Avenger! But as for using a projector inside a cabinet you could always use a first surface mirror to bounce the image and increase size. I have a modest home theater in 10'x11' room and with  the mirror I have a screen size of about 120". I'm thinking with a set up in a cab you'd only need a 4"-6" mirror to add some throw to the image.

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justindarc Newbie

justindarc

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Hello! Sorry for the late response to this thread. This is actually my cabinet and my video linked to in the top post, so I'd be glad to help answer any questions you guys may have.

I didn't realize this thread was even going on until I saw that someone mentioned in one of the comments on my YouTube video that they had posted my video here. Several people have commented on my video (as well as in this thread) that they'd like to see a "tech tour" video of my cabinet which I would be more than happy to do. I'll be sure to post that video here as soon as I get a chance to make it.

Anyhow, to answer some of the questions I've seen, here it goes:

Materials:

Total cost (inc'l shipping): ~$415

I'll be sure to showcase this when I do a tech tour video, but I have the pico projector mounted in the back of the cabinet pointed upward towards the ceiling. The picture then bounces off the mirror which is mounted at an ~45-degree angle in the top-back corner of the cabinet and hits the rear-projection film on the marquee glass. The nice thing about using a mirror is that it not only gives a much larger image that fills the width of the marquee, but it also naturally mirrors the projector image making it suitable for rear projection. Most projectors (including the ST200) have a built-in feature to mirror the image, but using an actual mirror makes it unnecessary. Also, to clarify, I used actual glass for the marquee, not plexi (although plexi would've worked just as well). I just used a couple pieces of double-sided tape to hold the rear-projection film to the glass.

One other important detail that I haven't seen mentioned here is that only approximately *half* of the projector's display is actually used on the marquee. Since the aspect ratio of the marquee is much wider than an ordinary 16:9 image, this means that a large portion of the total display area is unused. This is perfectly fine since all unused projection area ends up hitting the top of the inside of the cabinet and goes completely unseen. However, the only downside is that you end up losing a lot of vertical screen resolution.

In all honesty, I'm incredibly happy with the the final result in this setup. There are only two major downsides:

  1. The resulting resolution of the marquee ends up being only ~360p (half of 720p)
  2. The internal cooling fan in the ST200 is *slightly* audible when turned on (although, I was able to almost completely eliminate this sound by replacing the fan with a cheap "low-noise" 30mm cooling fan

That being said, the upside of only spending ~$415 on a working solution compared to bar/stretch LCD's that are at least double that cost greatly outweighs the downsides (at least in my opinion). Also, as I think others here have observed, projector technology is only going to continue to get cheaper and better with time. I imagine that I will be able to upgrade to a higher-resolution projector sometime in the near future that will help overcome these downsides. Until then, this ST200 is continuing to serve my setup well :-)

Let me know if you have any other questions or if I overlooked one of your existing questions in this thread. I'm really glad that someone else was able to find my marquee idea useful! I'll be sure to update here as soon as I make my tech tour video. Thanks!

 

-Justin

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