Monday, May 2, 2016

AOK LED Projector Vs Reality

KED projectors are really great. They are low power, nice and bright, and have a reputable image quality. They are getting cheaper by the day. Soon they will outpace conventional arc lamp based projector. That day may not have happened yet...

On Amazon there is a listing for a $400 4,200 lumen LED projector from the AOK brand.

A great benchmark for comparison is the Epson 1960 Powerlite. A great projector that ruthfully outputs 5,000 lumens.

After pulling the AOK projector put of the box it was clear to see the claim of 4,200 lumens was extremely exaggerated if not false. The Epson should only be a little bit brighter. However there was no comparison....





One step further, there was an ASUS B1M LED projector to compare it to. The ASUS runs at 700 lumens. Even at 700 lumens it was still much brighter than the AOK, rated at 4,200 lumens.




PS3 Eye Camera Infrared Diffuser

Following from the previous post, there is much love for the PS3 Eye Camera. Not only is it USB, super cheap, and sports nice open source software - it can do infrared (IR) video really easily.

So, after testing some lights it was time to make a few diffusers for the favorite model and conduct further testing.

Both the Diffuse 3mm PLA & the Transparent 3mm PLA from Cubicity were used in the testing. There was noticeably more light diffusion in the Diffuse filament - almost too much. The transparent kept it nice and bright. Thicknesses of 1mm, 2mm, and 3mm were used. Same camera settings for each shot.


PS3 Eye Infrared Flood

A favorite camera is by far the PS3 Eye. It is USB, can be found for super cheap online, and sports a host of features - variable resolution and frame rate, CCTV m12 mounts and lenses, IR & UV capabilities, plus a great open source app we helped develop hosted here: https://github.com/fred-dev/ps3EyeSyphon_2

To use for infrared (IR) camera tracking a suitable LED IR flood light is needed.

After trying many different lights online it was time to test out the top 4 and see how they stacked up in a more systematic manner.

96 LED     6 LED     4 LED     48 LED


As can be seen, the lights featured different diffusion patterns and strengths. Each picture was taken using the same camera settings.
Each light uses 12v DC and can be fairly easily operated on.