projector project with a difference

[anthdci]

The difference of this project is that it is not in my house, it is in my touring caravan. Before anyone has a go about caravans clogging the roads up ect I do agility dog shows most weekends, so it is either use a caravan or use a tent, and a tent doesn't offer any think the same level of comforts.

 

Anyway. This is my thinking. I use the caravan 99.9% away from a 240v main electrical hook up, so everything is ran from my 2 12v 110amp leisure batteries, therefore power saving is of the highest importance. At the moment I have a 12v-240v inverter which powers a laptop with an external USB TV tuner and an external usb3.0 hard drive with a bunch of media for us to watch. This has worked for the past 12 months but whoever is lieing in bed closest to the laptop kind of blocks the other due to the layout.

 

What I am thinking of doing is installing a pico-projector above the head of the bed, to go straight down the to the white window screen. Then install a car stereo with an Aux in and stereo speakers for the audio. The screen is 100cm wide by 50cm high, and the projector is roughly 182cm from the screen, but there is a +/- 10cm each way where I can mount it easily. I am aware these projectors are not the brightest but with the blinds down the caravan gets pretty dark anyway and there certainly are not any street lights.

 

I have been looking at pico-projectors and they mostly have a 240v AC plug which goes to a 12v DC input, so I was thinking there must be a way to wire this in direct without having to go with a 12v-240v inverter to go back down to 12v and get losses in the process of doing that? Obviously the car radio and speakers will be 12v anyway.

 

My next thinking was how am I going to get media onto it. a USB input that plays the media on my hard drive would be great but I am not sure what I am going to do to get the coax freeview TV signal into it.

 

Any thoughts, or ideas would be appreciated.

[anthdci]

Well after a lot of thinking an planning and putting on the back burner I have actually done something with this ready for the start of a new season. I bought a cheap projector off eBay, cheap because it doesn't need to be anything fancy, and it needed an external power supply. So I got a MediaLy G150X off eBay along with a laptop car charger and a cigarette lighter to crocodile clips to connect the leisure battery to the car charger.

 

Got it all put up together and tested it. First issue was the TV tuner built into the projector was analogue online, so I have had to buy a small freeview box that can be powered off the laptop car chargers built in USB charger. This I haven't tested yet but will be next weekend. I have tested it running off my 1TB portable USB hard drive and that works perfectly. The projector works and gives roughly a 40" image on the caravan blackout blind  :woot:. It has a built in speaker, but that is a bit quiet. I can easily plugin my Bluetooth speaker if I want to make it louder.

 

Audio is next on the list, I'll be fitting a car stereo with some 5inch speakers when I can afford it. I think so far the spend is about ?100, but I maybe looking to purchase a 3rd leisure battery in the future, but I'll see how it goes. I did some quick maths and I think 1 battery will run the projector for about 7-8 hours. (110amp/h battery running a 60w projector, other bits are negligible.)

[Haggis Veteran]

Do you not have the access to a electric point when in the van?

[anthdci]

no, the sites we go to are usually just farms or fields next to big manors, Rockingham castle is a good example. We have to use 12v leisure batteries and a generatorto charge them at longer shows.

[MikeChipshop Member]

  On 12/04/2014 at 13:03, anthdci said:

no, the sites we go to are usually just farms or fields next to big manors, Rockingham castle is a good example. We have to use 12v leisure batteries and a generatorto charge them at longer shows.

 

I used to tour with a few bands i was in back in the day and we used to just upscale from a leisure battery and use anything we like. Can you not just do that? Or am i missing the point completely? :p

[anthdci]

  On 12/04/2014 at 13:20, MikeChipshop said:

I used to tour with a few bands i was in back in the day and we used to just upscale from a leisure battery and use anything we like. Can you not just do that? Or am i missing the point completely? :p

 

yea I have a 150w 12v - 240v inverter. But it seems silly to go from 12v upto 240v then back down to 19v. That's quite an inefficient way to do it, wasting power as it converts. Since I need the batteries to last as long as possible being efficient is a priority. 

[D. S. Veteran]

If you have a 12v DC source, you need to gut your projector and wire it directly into it. Pick up a multimeter and get to it.

[anthdci]

  On 14/04/2014 at 00:09, D. S. said:

If you have a 12v DC source, you need to gut your projector and wire it directly into it. Pick up a multimeter and get to it.

 

That is part of the reason I got the one I did. I uses an external power block the same kind of thing as a laptop uses. Which is why I can run a car laptop power block to run it.

[T3X4S]

Something tells me I should be glad I dont know about this caravan life....   Im scared.

[anthdci]

A photo I took of my fiance and niece watching lady and the tramp (both blocked out for their privacy but you get the idea). Cupboard above them is open for my bluetooth speaker to sit in. Next thing to look into is installing a car stereo head unit and a couple of car speakers somewhere to provide sound from the front rather than from above.