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Displays Technology Science

A Projection Display For Your Pocket 162

Posted by timothy from the not-my-pocket-that-is-but-yours dept.
lub writes "The German Fraunhofer-Instituts für Siliziumtechnologie is developing a pocket beamer. It uses a laser beam and a rotating mirror to display the image. Another laser and a photo diode is used to verify whether the displayed image is shown correctly, so the electronics can adjust the image when the beamer moves. No colors yet; 320x240 in nice shades of red is what they have now, but higher resolutions and color might be implemented later. I want this in my BlackBerry!"
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A Projection Display For Your Pocket More

A Projection Display For Your Pocket

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  • Woohoo! (Score:4, Funny)

    by dirkdidit ( 550955 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:34PM (#10809058) Homepage
    Finally a Nintendo Virtual Boy that I can share and experience with my friends!

    • Re:Woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)

      by TWX ( 665546 )
      "Finally a Nintendo Virtual Boy that I can share and experience with my friends!"

      Dammit! I was just about to make that joke too!

      Are the seizures and migraine headaches a standard feature, or optional?
    • I live to look forward to genetic engineered sharks with beamers on their heads!

  • Beamer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is that a beamer in your pocket......

    oh yeah and firsties.

  • Sprachen ze WHAT? (Score:5, Informative)

    by THESuperShawn ( 764971 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:37PM (#10809076)
    Loosely translated in English (I don't soeak German, but my dog does).

    Beamer for the vest pocket

    A projector in the pocket size is in range: In it a mobile micro mirror develops the picture line for line. In laboratory prototypes researchers could increase its frequency of oscillation and dissolution so far that diagrams and texts appear clearly readable.

    Not much more largely than a piece wuerfelzucker could be the Beamer of the future. Built into Handys would always participate the mini projector - approximately for a PowerPoint presentation in the small circle or the fast view into an on-line journal. In strange cities it could facilitate orientation, by projecting simply a city plan to the next house wall. Still is this future music. Researchers of the institute for Fraunhofer for silicon technology ISIT in Itzehoe however already built a demonstrator for such a tiny equipment. It projects texts and diagrams with a dissolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Heart is a mobile mirror with a diameter of 1,5 millimeters, which can be manufactured as mass product on a chip. It directs a laser beam by speedy changing of its tilting angle, and develops so the picture pixel for pixels.

    "the special at the mirror is its suspension", stresses Ulrich Hofmann. "by a special attachment at two torsion bars the mirror can be tilted around two axles. Thus it can divert a laser beam horizontal and vertically." After each deflection the feathers/springs withdraw the mirror so fast into its initial position that it can be tilted several thousands times per second. Suitably the high mobility the researchers accelerated electronics. It decides within the range of nanoseconds, how it must modulate the laser light, so that each pixel in the correct brightness appears. In order to avoid errors in the projection, a second laser serves as control. It radiates likewise on the mobile mirror; the reflected light meets however a photodiode, which locates, as the mirror tilted. "the mirror changes its position for example by vibrations inadvertently, notices control this", explains Hofmann. "electronics can react then flexibly to it and adapt the picture information accordingly." The system is thereby to a large extent insensitively in relation to disturbances from the outside.

    Still the demonstrator fits into no mobile telephone. "for the test we had not made, say electronics smaller yet to a minimum" Hofmann. That is however one of the next goals of the researchers, who in addition the frequency of the mirror movement and so the dissolution would like to increase. Also in other place it hooks still: As tiny source of light with sufficient life span and leuchtstaerke there are so far only red laser diodes. Within this range the researchers wait now for developments of their colleagues. They however already prepared their system for the multi-color enterprise.

  • Anyone else wondering how they got on and the white sheet of paper with a red laser in the image of this device in TFA? :)

  • photoshop (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:38PM (#10809094) Journal
    That picture is obviously a photoshop job. Anyone got a real picture?

  • sorry in advance... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dirvish ( 574948 ) <(dirvish) (at) (foundnews.com)> on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:43PM (#10809128) Homepage Journal
    Is that a pocket beamer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

  • Obligatory (Score:1, Funny)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 )
    Is that a projector in your pocket, or did I just wake up in a Star Wars movie?

    LK

  • I haven't RTFA yet, but.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SledgeHBK ( 148480 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:44PM (#10809138)
    Anything would be better than watching the stupid slideshow before movies. All the boring awful ads and quote from Cher and Queen Latifah....

    I was thinking, hey, bring in my own little projector.

    Jesus, am I talking right now?

  • A dangerous crime-device! (Score:4, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:50PM (#10809173) Homepage
    Imagine the horrific new crime possible with this gadget: Drive-by PowerPoint presentations!

    This device should be surpressed for the good of all humanity. Think of the children!

  • In my pocket (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:50PM (#10809175)
    Who's going to want to watch a display in my pocket?

  • mirrordot mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:50PM (#10809178)
    http://mirrordot.org/stories/eb57b2ee6820e0666d616 ccb92825fc0/index.html [mirrordot.org]
  • And already /.'ed

  • Colour..... (Score:5, Informative)

    by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @06:57PM (#10809225) Homepage
    Colour projection is obviously going to rely on having either 3 base colour lasers (red, green, blue) or having a full-spectrum white.

    In the world of lasers, Red is the cheapest right now with Green a close second.

    However, when you get to Blue lasers, the price is significantly higher and then White lasers require you to sell your granny to afford them.

    I'd like to be wrong but a system like this will probably stay monochrome for a while yet.
    • Speak after me:
      THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WHITE LASER.
      by definition.

      @lameness-filter: i know caps are yelling, that why i use them here.
    • A laser beam contains coherent lightwaves of a single frequency. I would like to know how you propose to make white light with that :)

      Regardless, I think you are right that it will be a while ebfore we see a practical and anywhere enar affordable colour version of it.
      • A white laser is a laser with the property of being able to, on-the-fly, adjust the frequency of it to being virtually any other frequency in the visible spectrum, while still retaining all of its properties that make it qualify as laser light.

        I remember reading something about this last year, but I'm sorry I don't have the link.

        Technically you're right. The color isn't truly "white", but if you can cause the laser to rotate between red, green, and blue laser light so fast that the eye merges them toge

      • When I said full-spectrum white, I was hoping everyone (who knows lasers) would know the method.

        White lasers either provide a cyclic frequency or are Red Green and Blue combined.

        This is generally the reason for the astronomical prices of 'white' lasers.

        The reason that they're referred to as 'white' is that on full gain/balance they appear white to the human eye (r,g,b at balanced levels)

    • One granny for sale:-) (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just gimme that white laser!
    • I'd rather have a green laser. Just seems a bit more apealing, I don't ever remember a Red on Black terminal
    • That's not too relevant given that you only need one of each. It's a projector, not a flat panel.
    • I'd like to be wrong but a system like this will probably stay monochrome for a while yet.

      Depends on what you want to pay.

      Red and green diode lasers into the 100mw range are readily available for around $500 retail. The blue is in the $1k-2k range.

      I would easily pay $5K street for a doodad like this that would do 2048x1024 at 70Hz or better if it was bright enough and had good photo-realism, contrast should be excellent since it is off/on with the mirror. I wouldn't mind it weighing 10lbs and being as

  • Similar device (Score:2, Informative)

    by Bibo ( 111206 )
    At technology review they have an article about a similar device.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/12/dem o1204.asp?p=1 [technologyreview.com]
  • Just the other day I was looking up battery powered projectors, and found another company that is working on a small battery powered projector. [pdalive.com]
    I'm imagining a PC that actually stays in your pocket, the projector on your belt with a (as yet magical) elastic display that pops up, and a collapsible keyboard that roles into the buckle like a tape measure.
    • I was just thinking, this would go perfectly with one of those projected keyboards, the kind where you just tap the table...

      You could set the little box near a wall and have a full sized keyboard, and display, and the best thing is the tech for this seems to exist right now.
  • How long until they claim that overhead projectors violate their patent on "arbitrary static image projection"?
  • I dunno, the tilty mirror thingy is eye-catching and the little laser's cute an' all but it's gonna take more than that to make my pocket project!

    (Throw in a booth babe or two though and maybe we can work something out... :)
  • I want this in my BlackBerry!

    I don't want this in your Blackberry, or anything else either.

    I own a movie theatre and kids and teenagers with those damn laser pointers are enough of a distraction and cause for customer complaints already, thank you very much.
    • People still do that? Back in my hometown, Miami, that was a problem like seven or eight years ago at at least one major theater. The owner (or whoever was in charge, at least) had the smart idea of smacking a small video camera up above the center of the screen, aimed at the audience, feeding to the projection booth. They could clearly see whenever someone did it, and nailed them. I was there a few times where someone got caught, and it was fucking hi-larious. I dunno if they only had the cameras in a

  • Revolutionary. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eric434 ( 161022 ) * on Saturday November 13, 2004 @07:18PM (#10809336) Homepage
    If they can manufacture this cheap, then it will revolutionize laser lightshows. Effectively, this is a closed-loop scanning galvanometer capable of 30K+ speeds -- and current scanners with similar capabilities cost thousands of dollars per axis. They're a lot bigger too.

    If you replace the dinky red diode with a few hundred milliwatts of green, then guess what? Laser show in your pocket, at a price that any would-be laserist can afford. Not to mention all the applications in laser marking: the flexure arrangement means that the Fraunhofer galvo can achieve much longer lifetimes than standard ball-bearing arrangments. When you're scanning thousands of times per second, 24 hours a day... that's a good thing.
  • Just to make that clear: the second laser and photo diode is used to verify the position of the mirror.

    Not to verify the projected image. That's what I understood when I read the summary first.

    That would be a good idea: a control system (CCD or something) verifies the projected image, such that even on non-flat or not uniformly bright projection surfaces the image appears correct to the viewers.
    • You're absolutely right about the second laser.

      Projecting on non-flat and not uniformly bright surfaces is possible with 'smart projectors' [uni-weimar.de], which use camera feedback and pixel shaders to adjust the projected image.
    • Yup, and I hate to give freebie ideas to those hunting through slashdot comments for gold, but some kind of image monitor for feedback would be a huge improvement. This would form a closed loop control system, allowing all kinds of uncalibrated automatic adjustments to the output image. In other words, individual pixel points could be fixed in relation to "us" regardless of where they are physically projecting onto. i.e., flat projected image no matter what irregular projection surface is being used. This w
  • Thank goodness for Google's: text cache [google.ca].

    However I don't understand German.

    But Babelfish [altavista.com] does (kind of):

    A projector in the pocket size is in range: In it a mobile micro mirror develops the picture line for line. In laboratory prototypes researchers could increase its frequency of oscillation and dissolution so far that diagrams and texts appear clearly readable. Not much more largely than a piece wuerfelzucker could be the Beamer of the future. Built into Handys would always participate the mini projec

  • Already obsoleted (Score:4, Interesting)

    by erikharrison ( 633719 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @07:30PM (#10809409)
    I mean, maybe it's signifigantly larger, but I want one of these: http://www.io2technology.com/dojo/178/v.jsp [io2technology.com]

    The difference being partially that the heliodisplay works, now, and is much more Star War-sy
  • The two most important constraints on the size of portable devices these days (that I see), are the amount of information they are able to display, and the input method. This removes the display size issue, you can have a large display size in something really small. cool

  • Cinematic precursor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @07:49PM (#10809526)
    Does anyone remember that Sean Connery movie "Zardoz", where he is poking around someone's house and finds a green emerald ring, which when he activates it begins speaking and projects a computer display on the wall in front of him. I thought that was pretty cool.
  • This reminds me of the matchbox-sized pojector the finnish company Upstream [upstream.fi] expects to put on market soon, with a first model commercially avaible in 2005.
    Washington Times have a story on it too [washingtontimes.com].
  • from pocket protectors to pocket projectors.
  • ...what is the 'projected' cost of this? I mean my german is horrible, maybe someone else can just tell me?

  • so? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by khrtt ( 701691 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @09:19PM (#10809970)
    It's a monochrome laser projector with a scanning mirror. There is one of these in every laser printer. Except this one scans two dimensions. Then again, its 320x200 instead of 5100 pixel line scanned by a 600dpi letter-size printer. So its not a big deal. Besides, wasn't there, back in 1998 or so, some 3D stereo display for some game console that used a red scanning laser? I think I've seen one in K-mart. I suppose, noone wanted a monochrome display then, and noone will want one now.

    So the interesting thing about this gadget is not the amazing fact that someone made a laser projector, because there really is nothing amazing about it. The interesting thing is whether these guys would ever get 3 lasers (especially the blue one) cheap enough, while powerfull enough to scan a highres picture, as large as an LCD projector does, onto a wall. They'd need 3 powerfull lasers. As light sources go, lasers are about the least efficient, so the gizmo would drain a lot of power, and it will have to be large, with the heatsinks, fans, an all. So, the gadget would really end up being at least as large as an LCD projector, and some 10 times more expensive, mostly because of the blue laser. Why bother?
    • Why bother?

      Because sometimes bothering to try something hard even though others can't see the value, can lead to cool new things in science. In YOUR estimation, the device they seek to build has to be the size of an LCD projector. This is not their goal, so how can you insist on knowing what the end result will be? It's big right now, they want it to be small, and that's one main thing they must work on. Work, you know, that thing that causes things to happen, as opposed to just thinking. You can't make r
  • Is this really new technology? The Canesta keyboard [canesta.com] already projects an image of a keyboard on any surface. This seems to be the same thing, except the Canesta keyboard exists in reality, and this site has a (well looks like anyway) photoshoped image. It could of course differ in resolution, etc.
    • Except the Canesta projects a static image using the same type of holographic filters that come with the $2 laser pointer you can buy from your local ice cream truck. It is essentially a laser slide-show. Projecting a dynamic image is much, much harder.
    • This company's "products" seem to be total vapor. They've been claiming their product is about to be shipped "real soon now" since like 1999. yeah...no one's holding their breath anymore.

  • Picture? Yes! Noise? Oh-no! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Saturday November 13, 2004 @09:40PM (#10810072)

    Nach jeder Auslenkung ziehen die Federn den Spiegel so schnell in seine Ausgangslage zurück, dass er sich mehrere tausend Mal pro Sekunde verkippen lässt.

    It's been many years since I studied German, but that reads to me: the mirror moves "more than a thousand times per second". Translation: this thing vibrates at approximately 1 KHz. That's probably not only audible, but it probably would cause a noticable vibration in your hand, too.

    I realize the vibration's amplitude is probably minor, but I can hear the buzz from a TV from 30 feet away... and I've known several other people who could do the same, so I'm not unique in that regard. The whir of my PC's fan and disk drives can be terribly annoying.

    So, I think it's a great accomplishment, but I'd hold off buying one until the buzz dies down. ;^)

    • this thing vibrates at approximately 1 KHz. That's probably not only audible, but it probably would cause a noticable vibration in your hand, too.

      Audible or not, your hand won't feel it - the frequency is way too high. Put your hand on an audio speaker and change the frequency; on 20 Hz you can feel the vibration, at 100 Hz you can't. But an ear, of course, has smaller and lighter parts and can hear up to 15-20 kHz.

      High speed cameras also have to use mirrors because the film never stops, so the frame ha

    • the mirror moves "more than a thousand times per second". Translation: this thing vibrates at approximately 1 KHz. That's probably not only audible, but it probably would cause a noticable vibration in your hand, too.

      I doubt it. The mirrors probably have so little mass that there is no detectable physical vibration. Also, I presume that there is MEMS technology [wikipedia.org] involved here, and those things are so small that the mechanical operations are not perceptable on the macro scale.

      I could be wrong about thi

    • Nach jeder Auslenkung ziehen die Federn den Spiegel so schnell in seine Ausgangslage zurück, dass er sich mehrere tausend Mal pro Sekunde verkippen lässt.

      It's been many years since I studied German, but that reads to me: the mirror moves "more than a thousand times per second".

      It means "several thousand times per second" (I'm German). This is necessary if you want decent refresh rates. The mirror has to be tilted once for every scanline; if you want 70 fps at 240 lines of vertical resolution,

    • Oh, good. I thought I was the only one in the world who knows that there's a TV on somewhere in the house, even if it's muted.
  • While porn is usually brought up as what drives the acceptance of new technology, games have to be a close second.

    Aside from the issues of selling even low power lasers to kids (i.e., cheap laser pointers warning that they are not toys and shouldn't be sold to kids), wouldn't it be easy to use a cheap red laser diode to make a "game console" that would let you play Asteroids, Battle Zone, or Missle Command type games on your wall (or on the side of your house 20' high)?

    Or, as others have joked about, just

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