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October 2014 - Getting ready for crowdfunding

A project log for Lighty - world's first robotic pico projector

Lighty is a 4DOF mobile robot whose aim is to empower pico projectors. Before Lighty, setting up a movie was really difficult.

ovidiu-sandruOvidiu Sandru 07/23/2017 at 15:250 Comments

The first finished Lighty prototype could do a lot of things beside rotating and tilting the projector.

It had proximity detection, automatic focus and gesture recognition. For example, when the user put his hand in front of the projector, it would automatically turn off. If you put your hand once again, it would turn on. 

Lighty had an accelerometer, so when placed on a tilted surface, it would move the carriage and projector until the image would be perfectly horizontal.

It could be controlled from an Android smartphone and would use the phone's accelerometer to position the projector. The chain was something like: phone->wifi router->tablet->arduino->motors.

Now it was time to the the whole thing a step further. I started doing a video with all sorts of scenarios where Lighty could be used, borrowed a DSLR camera and learned what I truly didn't like. 

A teaser came out first, and later in 2015 a full 4 minute movie:

This was Lighty at its best. The entire concept/prototype/video had been made by me, and I was proud of it. I was one step away from crowdfunding.

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