DLP pico kit V2 with external light source!!!

Ahmed,

The Pico Kit V2 is a very compact, dense, highly integrated unit. The light engine (DMD, LEDs, optics) are in a tightly packed module which we do not consider user modifiable.

I recommend that you perhaps get a Pico Kit V2 to investigate the DLP technology and be able to see it in operation "out of the box". However, your needs will best be met by developing your project around the 0.17 HVGA chipset.

Please see http://ti.com/mems and click on the link for 0.17 HVGA Chip Set.

Best regards,

Pascal

Hi, I don't want to hijack this thread, and hopefully it isn't too stale to respond to yet, but how would one go about getting a couple of DLP1700's to play with? Everywhere I look it seems that you need to order a minimum quantity of 100-150. That makes it cost prohibitive, of course. I want to do very simple things just as the OP (just shine light on the .17 HVGA DMD) and experiment with it). This will tell me whether I want to end up getting a light commander, which seems to be highly configurable, or a full blown discovery kit. I need to play around with a very simple DMD setup first though (jsut a DMD with controller and DVI input).

Raphael,

Welcome to the DLP & MEMS E2E forum.

I recommend that you get a Pico Kit V2. The distributors are showing these as not available at the moment. Please try again towards the end of March.

Also, please consider the DLP LightCommander Kit. It features a 0.55 inch, XGA (1024x768) DMD. The LightCommander is very modular, and it would be much easier to look at the DMD directly than with the Pico Kit V2.

The form factors of the kits (Pico vs LightCommander) are very different, but the LightCommander is a great foundation for exploring DLP technology.

Best regards,

Pascal

Thanks for your response. I see that you're recommending getting a pico kit. However you did caution the OP against trying to open it up and tinker with it very much, but even if it is not easy, I just want to verify that it is possible. Once I get a feel for this thing, which is only $350, I would then be able to justify getting a Light Commander.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

Raphael

Here's another question. The lead times on these DLP systems seem to be very long from most of the distributors. If I wanted a cheap way to play around with one until they get back in stock, how hard would it be to rip the lamp out of a cheap DLP projector and then shine laser light onto the DMD? Would using the video inputs of the projector still work, or would everything stop working because the lamp isn't present? I imagine in most of the commercially available projectors, they have the DMD mounted directly some kind of lens system without any easy way to remove it, too. But if that's not actually the case I may buy one of the many cheap DLPs on the market and try and tinker with the DMD.

Raphael,

I have no recommendations about doing this. TI does not provide any support for modification of off-the-shelf DLP projectors.

If you have questions about a DMD or chipsets, I will try to answer them.

With respect to the long delivery times for the Pico Kit V2 -- check with the distributor again towards the end of March.

Best regards,

Pascal

Hello Raphael.

I've just joined this forum for the purpose of discussing my personal experience with modifying a Pico projector for laser use.  I dearly hope that TI does not frown upon such things and take issue with my work so far and thoughts on the matter.

My goal in modifying one of these nifty little projectors is holography.  The DMD I've harvested will play an important role in projecting digital images onto ground glass on my optical table.  Ideally, I would have started with a development kit, but these ran beyond my price range and I found that an Optoma Pico projector fit much more nicely into my budget.  Another reason for choosing a Pico projector over a larger-scale DLP projector or development kit was the particular light engine they use.  The RGB LED system seemed as though it would lead to it being simple work to illuminate the chip with red, green and blue lasers for full color work.  As it turns out, the duty cycle of the micromirrors presents a potential stability issue which could ruin a hologram through movement (cycling thousands of times per second to dump unwanted light and continuously toggling between colors would not be ideal for CW holography).

Originally I had thought that I would simply aim a raw red laser beam into the red LED hole, a blue beam into the blue hole, green into green, after having removed and isolated the LEDs.  Turns out these LEDs get HOT, bro.  I had figured on allowing them to run in a tiny box, still electrically attached so as to avoid the control board missing them and kicking me out an error code.  This was a moot point in the end, as the accidental dettachment of their ribbon cable from the board provided me the opportunity to try running the unit without the lights even hooked up.  The projector functions just fine without its LEDs, and I'm tickled pink that I no longer have to keep that light off my very expensive holographic film.  It's also nice to avoid the fire hazard they would present just dangling there in a jewelery box or something.

With LEDs removed and forgotten,. I moved on to replacing the light with something a bit more coherent.  The newly-evacuated LED holes are just the right size for a raw laser beam - but....  As it turns out, the on-board optics that work just fine for white light are not exactly up the challenge presented by laser light.  If you have any experience with lasers, then you know that this is very picky light, and only some optical elements are up to it.  The projected image was rather sub-par through the built-in optics, running the gamut from edge diffraction to newton rings.  This was even after the removal of the fly's eye integrator that lies just downstream of the LEDs and dichroics.  I realized in short order that I was going to need to use optical elements of my own.

My eventual solution and current permutation is s a DMD loosed from the optical module (all very tiny stuff), illuminated at 24 degrees to the normal with a raw laser beam for a "keeper" reflection at the normal to the chip.  This reflection (one of hundreds - the chip diffracts laser light like a disco ball) is collected by an achromatic lens at its FL away from the surface of the chip, which focuses the image on the other side of my table.  For a cleaner image, at some point when budget allows, the raw beam will make way for a spatially-filtered beam immediately re-collimated for efficiency.

Best of luck!

Hi Justin,

I read your posting about the modification you've done and I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the pico projector, which might not be relevant to the discussion forum. Would it be possible to contact you directly via email?

Many thanks,

Daz