So I received my Endlighten acrylic last Friday and some IR lights from Environmentalights.com. I did a ton of tests so read through the stuff below.
Recieving the Endlighten:
Probably the worst packaging job Id seen ever. Like one of those shows where they show you how messed up an item looks after shipping it, that's how the acrylic looked. The very thin paper covering and thin layer of bubble wrap did little if anything to protect the expensive acrylic. Corners were heavily chipped and most of the sides were exposed.
Removed packaging (iphone for size reference) It is about 42" diagonal in a 16:9 ratio:
Brought my LED-LP LCD table over below the Endlighten acrylic and some normal, clear 6mm acrylic:
Looking down at the LCD image with both pieces splitting half the image (Endlighten on right and normal on left):
The pictures above are a little dark, but I could not tell any difference between the two acrylics in terms of clarity. They both looked exactly the same. Thus I think it is highly likely that a DSI LCD setup will work just fine.
Next I placed my projector below the two sheets and used normal computer paper as a diffuser for testing (again, Endlighten on right and normal acrylic on left):
Again I couldnt tell any difference, except that the particles inside the Endlighten diffused the image a little, so that without a diffuser, it seemed like you may not need a diffuser, since the particles stop the image, whereas the clear acrylic let the image go straight through.
On to the Environmentallights.com IR Lights.
I received a reel of 850nm IR LEDs:
and a test strip of 940nm IR LEDs:
The LEDs look like this close up:
And the 850nm ones glow a slight red which is only slightly noticable when the lights are completly off:
With my ps3 camera that had a floppy disk poor-man's band pass filter, here is what the 850nm LED lights look like:
and what the 940nm ones look like:
The floppy disk isnt filtering for a specific wavelength, but as you can see, the 850nm IR LEDs produce a much brighter image.
I also took a similar picture of a flourecent lamp in my room, with a floppy disk band pass filter:
And a 850nm band pass filter:
Quite a difference.
Next I did some tests. First I used the 6mm clear arylic and wrapped the 850nm ribbons all the way around:
The LED strips from environmentallights.com are really easy to use. Took me all of 5 mins to surround the acrylic.
The 940nm strip was too short to surround the entire piece of acrylic, so I did a test surrounding the clear acrylic with both wavelengths and only around as much as the 940nm length was and with the floppy disk as the band pass filter.
The 850nm:
And the 940nm one:
Not too much of a difference with the floppy disk on, but with the proper band pass filter it would make a big difference. Again, the 940nm is less as bright due to the ps3 cam's sensor being less sensitive.
Then I surrounded the Endlighten Acrylic with the full 850nm strip and setup the PS3 cam with the 850nm band pass filter:
Very light pressure:
And dragging with light pressure (peace):
The setup so far works great and I am very excited. The Endlighten coupled with the lights from Environmentallights.com created the DSI very well and very easily, as everything was setup in under 10 minutes.
Here is the url for buying the reel of 850nm IR LEDs from environmentallights.com
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