DIY Dorm: Smartphone Projector Flop

Once upon a time there was a pin on Pinterest. It intrigued me but I doubted it would work.

The Pin

The Instructions

I filed it away for a rainy day, and today was that rainy day. Ok, so, It wasn't actually raining... but it is 30 May! The day of The Pintester Movement!

I decided to test instructions for a "DIY Dorm: Smartphone Projector". I've really wanted a projector, even a cheap piece of junk one. My brother-in-law had a little one that he'd point at the ceiling so he could watch movies in bed. It didn't have very good image quality at all, but it was fun. I thought about looking for one of those, but then I found the pin and thought if I could make one for no money out of junk I had lying around the house, even better.

I started by gathering supplies.

- Shoebox - Shipping box is close enough

- Duct Tape - Very Yes

- X-acto knife - I used a steak knife
- Magnifying glass - Borrowed one from a friend
- Ruler - Pfft. (They actually don't explain how to measure anything anyways, so it wouldn't have been used even if I had bothered to find one)
- Pencil - I have a couple of those around here
- Phone stand - Who actually has one of those?

(Just so you know Zhena's Fire Light Chai is amazing with Vanilla Almond Silk)

So I followed the instructions about taping up the box and putting in the magnifying glass.

I rigged up a  hack job  very creative smartphone stand using a notebook, a brick, and a big wad of sticky tac. It worked rather well...

I took the whole contraption into the darkest room of the apartment, closed the curtains, and turned on the iPod. It looked pretty cool with the lens glowing.

To my surprise... something did appear on the wall. A vaguely glowing blob. Encouraged, I pulled up a high contrast black and white image and started messing with angles and distances. I could actually make out the picture! Not in any great detail, but I could very tell it was a guy.

I started to get excited and turned on a YouTube movie (MLP:FIM). That's when the disappointment happened. The super high contrast image looked alright, but regular images were almost impossible to make out. I tried putting an extra blanket over the window thinking maybe a darker room would help. It didn't really. Even with the high contrast image I couldn't even get a photo of anything but a blank wall.