Raspberry pi & Arduino The next step was to design the perspex board which will mount the raspberry pi, which will be our media player, and the arduino which will control the back light, power and sensors (more on this at a later date). As with all of these boards, we began with a vector design: Vector Graphics for the Raspberry Pi and Arduino perspex. The different colours represent different depths of raster engraving. Quick [...]
With the screen temporarily hung, it was time to decide how to lay out the acrylic sheets on which the 3DTV's processing, driver and control boards would go. These would be mounted above the LCD layer of the TV and had to be laid out in a way which allowed for the signal bearing pre-made (rather intricate looking) cables and connectors would still reach each other. The Main Board First up was the mainboard, this has all [...]
With each layer in its own frame, we decided to begin hanging the components from the brackets (now drilled and mounted on the wall) to begin to establish how to lay out connections between the boards. Story line of pictures below tells most of the story, each is also captioned have a read if you're interested!
The next step was to house and mount each of the separate layers in their own frame. These frames will then be hung from the brackets as shown in the concept diagram: Each layer was different and therefore required a custom made frame. Each frame was made from aluminium to keep weight down. This will just be a picture post, each photo is captioned explaining the process:
Out with the old... First things first, the CCFL tubes had to go! In with the new... We decided to bite the bullet and order 40 meters of white 5050 LED strip. When it arrived the build began. Considering the current requirements for the amount of LED strip we were planning on using (~36 meters), we decided on a 24v rail for LED power. This meant each 12v LED strip would be placed in [...]
At this point, with the TV in peices, there was a few of us who had gathered around. Primarily fellow engineers and lab techs. That was when an idea was born, whilst talking to each other, Bill Backhouse (lead lab tech and close friend) and I had a brain wave. This is somthing other young engineers would enjoy looking at. So we decided to make it a show peice. A hanging exploded, hopefully working model of a [...]
So, one of the bigger perks associated with working in a multimedia research lab is that you're surrounded by a ton of multimedia equipment. After a long day of fighting with an LTE simulator, its nice to have a 65" 3DTV to watch a film on after hours. Sadly a few weeks ago one of our passive 3DTVs in the lab gave up on us. This was regularly used for subjective assessments by other researchers and, after being [...]
