3D DLP Projectors in varying states

@torchedguitar and I left two 3D DLP projectors on the UFG shelf during the work day Saturday that are in varying states but probably interesting enough tech that someone here would enjoy fiddling with them. The Benq has a dead pixel and probably needs a new lamp. The Optoma had some weird behavior and is in an unknown state. I’ll let @torchedguitar tell the full story on them, but wanted to get a post in real quick so there’s something to reference for the stuff on the shelf. They are in separate boxes labeled with the brand and model number.

Seems like they both need new lamps. And the Benq has a loose part flopping around next to the lens. I found a bulb for the Optima so I’ll probably grab this one.

The Benq most certainly does, but it’s also got a dead pixel, so you’ve got a perma white dot in whatever you’ve got displayed (can be especially annoying if you do 3D with it). If you’re cool with that, that one is a solid short-throw projector that served us well for many years.

The Optoma is an unknown. We had it for a few years and randomly heard a pop then image loss that sounded/looked like the lamp going out, despite it not being near the hour lifespan on the lamp. When we opened it up, there was none of the typical busted lamp evidence that we’ve seen in other projectors. Nevertheless, we tried buying a new lamp anyway and replaced it. Turning it back on with the new lamp, it immediately popped again but again the lamp looked perfectly intact and exactly the same as when we put it in (@torchedguitar took really nice macro photos of the lamp and we could not see any difference whatsoever pre and post pop). @torchedguitar took it apart further to look and see if there was any obvious evidence of damage on the circuit board and nothing really stood out. He has been doing projectors as home TVs for the last 20 yrs or so – I believe all mercury lamp ones like these – so he’s pretty well versed in them, but hadn’t ever come across anything like what we saw with the Optoma. We decided to take the opportunity to switch to an LED projector with 3x the lumens instead of trying to figure out what’s going on with the Optoma and deal with more mercury lamps.

The part that I guess became loose on the Benq is a custom clip we had to make to get the lens to properly focus (sent it back initially and “new” one had the same issue). Without it, it can’t be focused for the full screen.

@beirdo, if you happen to be at the space right now, @torchedguitar is up there getting clamps off a glue up. You can get details from him directly. He’s in the woodshop chiseling off some squeeze out.

OK here’s some more detail on these things. Note, they both have their remotes in the box.

I see @beirdo grabbed the Optoma – good luck, dude! That one had us pretty confused. Normally when the bulb gets close to the end of its life, the projector pops up warnings about it before the bulb actually blows. The Optoma just blew the bulb one day with no warning. It definitely had a lot of hours on it – that was the original bulb it came with, so I’m not sure if it blew earlier than expected (I hadn’t been checking the usage hours). We ordered a replacement bulb and put it in, and that one seemed to immediately blow as well. @valerie lucked out and managed to return that bulb for a full refund, haha. But yeah, I think the electronics for the bulb driver may be in rough shape. I tried opening it up more, and I at least cleaned it, but I didn’t get far enough into disassembling it to look for blown components. I did see a fuse in there, and I multimetered it and it seems good. Hopefully you can just put in a new bulb and have it work. If that fails, be sure to get the bulb from somewhere with a good return policy!!! And then if you crack it open and look at the board, maybe you’ll be able to find the culprit and replace that. Lemme know if you find yourself needing a random capacitor or whatnot – I have a good stash at home.

About the BenQ… When we first got it, we noticed a bit more chromatic aberration in one corner. I found that just pushing on the lens with my finger actually fixed that. So, being maker nerds that we are, we fashioned a small metal clip out of an old CPU heatsink bracket that will squeeze the lens in the right spot if you use the zoom dial to extend the lens so it pushes on the clip – that’s likely what @beirdo heard flapping around – just zoom the lens until it’s snug. :slight_smile: We originally decided to stop using that one and buy a newer projector because it developed a pixel that stays full-white all the time. If you try to watch movies on it, you’ll definitely see it. It is 1080p @ 60 Hz, so we were just excited to try the Optoma that can do 1080p @ 240 Hz, so we put the BenQ in a box to deal with later. When I tried to fire it up before taking it to assembly, the red LAMP light was on and it wasn’t starting up. So, I think the lamp must have broken while I was taking it down from the ceiling mount or whatnot. That one should still be in reasonable working condition with a new bulb, aside from the one bad pixel. It’s still sitting on the Up For Grabs shelf for whoever is interested.

Happy projecting! These things were both super fun for playing games and watching movies & TV.

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