Classicamiga Forum Retro Edition
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Thread: Bought a beamer
Demon Cleaner 13:11 29th May 2012
My DVD player is only used to watch sometimes, very rarely, some asian horror movies, so it's basically not running at all, most of my movies are stored on my NAS in another room, and played with my Mede8er mediaplayer.

The center speaker is basically at ear height, but you can adjust/rotate it up/down like you want. The height is fine, you only miss a tiny part of the bottom screen, but anyway, in 2 weeks or less, the beamer will be connected, and the TV almost won't be used anymore.

@Harrison
The retro stuff will not be connected to the beamer and this setup.
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 19:39 4th June 2012
First day of work, put almost the half of the panels already, and redid also all of the electricity to put spots into the ceiling, was quite a lot of work. Panels are 4.10m long, so putting them being only 2 people (me and dad), is kinda pain in the butt. But so far we managed to do well. Tomorrow we will start the other half, and also will attach the projection screen, hopefully. The wooden strips will be put last of course, so the pictures are not yet final.

You can clearly now see the difference between the new, and "really" old ceiling. Behind the mirror is the HDMI cable for the beamer, and a plug for power.








[Reply]
Harrison 12:44 5th June 2012
You have been busy. Look forward to the finished result.
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 19:13 5th June 2012
This morning, I did some shopping, bought supports to fix the beamer to the ceiling, some plugs, and I had to buy new spots. Yesterday whilst watching TV, suddenly the lights went off after 30 minutes. I was scared at first, then tested straight away the temperature, and I can tell, they were VERY hot. So I waited until they cooled down, then tried to switch them on again, and they worked fine, so it definitely was due to the heat.

The problem is that these spots are 12V and use a transformer. That one should have some space above, which is not really possible, because over the panels on the ceiling, there's glass wool, and that's then lying on the transformer. Would have to push that away, perhaps then it would work. But I didn't want to try now over and over again, and just bought new spots, 220V ones.

Problem was, the hole for the old spots was 58mm, and the new one is 75mm. Because the panels are already attached to the ceiling, you cannot drill anymore, so we had to widen the 4 holes with a hand saw, which took quite some time.

We put also 6 other panels, and one with the other 3 spots in it. Of course we had also to do the whole electricity for these, and that always takes some time.

I also bought LED bulbs for the 4 spots that are switched on quite often, plus I connected them to a dimmer with a remote control, so you can dim or switch them on/off from the couch, quite pratical when you want to watch a movie and don't have to get up to press the switch





LED light bulbs, only hanging there at the moment.



Same but dimmed



Dimmer remote



As that remote was 80€, which is too expensive in my opinion, and I'm only using 3 buttons, I will perhaps try if I could do the same with just another, adaptive remote. I think that should be possible.

Tomorrow morning first thing will be probably the projection screen, as it will be attached to the next panel. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish with the living room.
[Reply]
Harrison 23:26 5th June 2012
I've been tempted to get a remove dimmer for our living room. However when I looked the available options were a bit confusing and not very well explained online. Will have to do some more research later on that. Would also need to change the light in there as we have energy saving light bulbs (EU regulation as regular bulbs are now banned here) and the type we have states it can't be used with dimmers. Annoying!

Interesting about your spot lights as we had a similar issue. So with 12V spotlights that have a transformer they need space above them for the heat their produce? But if replaced with 220V spotlights they can be within an enclosed roof space? Don't 220V spots produce as much heat? Or is it just the transformer that is the issue?

With our problem when the house was new (6 years ago I think), after about 6 months the trip switch tripped the upstairs lighting. I reset it, but when turning the bathroom lights on a huge bang and spark, followed by a burning smell happened. I went into the loft and the loft insulation was charred black around the spotlight fitting. Could have easily caused a fire. We called out the builders because the house was new and under warranty. They replaced the blown light fitting and removed the insulation around all of the spot lights around both the bathroom and En-Suite. They said it was due to me boarding in the loft, but thought that was stupid as we have the same spotlights fitted in the downstairs toilet and kitchen and they have another floor above them, so don't need to be open above. Also all these spotlights were completely covered over in the loft by the builders with 18 inch thick loft insulation, so boards above them instead wasn't going to do anything worse was it?
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 19:23 6th June 2012
Originally Posted by Harrison:
Interesting about your spot lights as we had a similar issue. So with 12V spotlights that have a transformer they need space above them for the heat their produce? But if replaced with 220V spotlights they can be within an enclosed roof space? Don't 220V spots produce as much heat? Or is it just the transformer that is the issue?
The spots I have now, only produce heat below them, the lightbulb itself has some protection that the heat doesn't go up, this was not the case with the other ones. And probably the transformer had some kind of overheat detection built in, so when it got hot, it just switched off, which of course is a good thing. But with all that wool above the ceiling, I would have had to build some construction, so that the transformer would have had some space.

Projection screen is hanging now, strange I didn't get a good picture of it, I took 10, but all of them are blurry.

The ceiling is also now finished, only have to put the wooden strips around tomorrow.

There it's hanging



Plug is again attached to the ceiling, so you don't have cables hanging down to the floor







Attachement was quite difficult, because I had to fix it to the joists. But the screen only has 2 hooks to hang, so I couldn't fix it directly to the ceiling. So we made some kind of construction, with hooks, and it was also easy not to get it into the right angle/level.

Funny thing is, that the metal bar it is attached to, is an older bar for curtains I had in my appartement. My father still had it lying on the roof, so that was the best solution. And the bar was very expensive, as it's one from Liang Li, some designer.

Here's a bad picture of the screen down, screen is 108"



Tomorrow we will also finally put the beamer, and Friday afternoon a guy comes to calibrate it.
[Reply]
Harrison 01:30 7th June 2012
Now that is impressive. I bet you can't wait to have everything finished and running. Should be great.
[Reply]
Kin Hell 13:59 7th June 2012
Pic is blurry because it is just a white background with nothing to focus on. One of the dismays of Digital Cameras I guess, but the non-reflective surface of the screen also adds to the blur.

Having said that, I'm looking forward to seeing your results. What you have done there is very good.

A close friend of mine just bought a BenQ w1200 affair & I am also really looking forward to seeing his set up once finished.
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 17:00 7th June 2012
We finished today, finally. Everything is in place and ready to be fired on.

Wooden strips are placed, only have to repaint the wall a bit when I get some time





And here's the baby, it's huge, you don't see it on the picture (almost 50x50x20 and 15kg)







I think I'm gonna fire it up now, but I really want to wait for the bigger setup until tomorrow, when the pro comes, and makes the calibration and all that stuff.

Gonna keep you updated guys.
[Reply]
Kin Hell 17:03 7th June 2012
Wicked!
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