Why have everyone crowd around your phone, or have it passed around the room as everyone looks at your latest pictures when you can flip a switch and show the whole group on the wall with your convenient built-in projector. Well, sounds like science fiction today, but it’s not so far from reality, and upon closer inspectionit won’t cost much either.
LED projectors also have the potential to be cheap because Upstream’s ornate optical system won’t be assembled out of many parts. The optical shell will be stamped out of plastic on injection-mold production lines. The basic Photon Vacuum system, which consists of an LED with the integrated optical system, can likely sell for under $10 in high volumes.
The reduction in size comes from a technique invented by Upstream for channeling the light from LEDs to a display in thousands of small beams. Light, whether from a candle or an LED, naturally shines in every direction. Upstream has built a complex micro-optical system that collects that light close to the source and sends a huge proportion of it to an intended target. The so-called “photon vacuum” optical system surrounds the LED like a shell.
As a result, a tiny optical package can provide roughly the same level of illumination efficiency that larger systems can.
“The idea is to collect every single ray and direct it to the display itself,” said Mikko Alasaarela, president and founder of Upstream. “We’ve been approached by about 150 companies” from many industries.
Source: ZDNet
