DLP DMD panel as a mirror

Hello Jyun Ooi.

Would you be able to explain more about your application?

The DMD array looks like a mirror upon inspection. The human eye cannot see the individual mirrors at 1x magnification, but the the mirror array does indeed look like a mirror. 

Were you trying to have the display on the screen act like a mirror, with some sort of camera feedback and projection as a mirror image?

Just let us know.

Thank you,

Matt

Hello Matt,

Yes, I am trying to make a prototype that uses DMD as a mirror to reflect light from the real scene and selectively project the reflected light onto a screen that hopefully still looks like a mirrored image. However , I am concerned about the distortion or blurriness in the reflected image.

Hi Jyun Ooi,

Ok, I believe I understand the concept now. I thought at first you were trying to create a single-pixel camera or something to capture an image, but it sounds like you want to actually just reflect photons of a scene.

Since the DMD is an array of repeating mirrors, there will be diffraction losses of a certain magnitude depending on the optical design. The application note that you highlight explains all of that. You would need "fast" optics to capture as much light as possible and also to project as much as possible also. 

I don't believe we would be concerned about the sharpness of the image. As long as the optical design has high uniformity at the projection plane, the image should be clear. It would then depend on the resolution you require. 

Another item that comes to mind is that the DMD displays digital frames of data. There is "dithering" of the data, a kind of smoothing of the data as the frames are displayed. The human eye integrates all of this into a clear, smooth running display. This is not blurriness, just a function of the system.

Hope this helps. Please let us know what other questions you have. We may have other experts chime in depending on your questions.

Thanks,

Matt