Friday
While I thought I had the LEDs fully working on Thursday, it turned out that wasn’t the case. I spent most of the morning getting them going. Grant got the screen and screen fabric up. I got the projector oriented enough to know I had the wrong one. I bought a nice 1080p projector and had tested it in various ways but when I got in here, I just saw way too much screen door effect in it to keep it. Unfortunately I can’t return it and it cost over $2000.
Saturday
I spent about four hours shopping for a new projector on what was supposed to be my day off. I was about to pull the trigger on a $3800 one when I came across the Bomaker Polars 4k Ultra Short Throw Laser TV. I am a little nervous about it since it is only $1800 (after discounts) and it isn’t even listed on Amazon (but is on Walmart). It claims a 200″ at a ultra short distance of 28 inch to the display surface, which is just insane. Seems too good to be true, but we’ll see. As with the original Eureka Room projector, I needed no rainbow effect so my options were limited.
Sunday
I took Sunday off.
Monday
Monday I finally got down to working on the Final Cut / TouchDesigner setup. I tried upgrading Touchdesigner, but I couldn’t get it to work with my Blackmagic card, so I went back to the old one. That’s probably for the better. I’m changing enough now. This also saves me the license fee.
I did a lot of math and experimenting to figure out how my new process will work and how I will convert the old stuff to the new 6-panel format. This meant taking a 16:9 aspect ratio in 4k and putting it into TouchDesigner where I crop it and throw it up where it needs to go. With the 4-panel version I had just sort of eyeballed things, but that resulted in stuff being off center and a little wonky to debug. Now (assuming a slightly down-res’ed version of the projector feed will still look good), I can start updating the videos without needing to be in the room. I had been waiting for the plexiglass to go up so I could work with the final dimensions.
I also found indications of mice and cockroaches, so called pest control, setup a meeting with Mehul, and cleaned up some of the wiring and related parts to be safe and easier to work around.
The Week Ahead
I’m hoping the projector will come in this week and that Grant will have all the plexi and back wall up and going. The back wall is tricky since we don’t have the projector yet but I hope at least some work can be done.
I’m also hoping to get the programs 80% updated, and to get Wendy to finish the curtains so we can hang them, plus get the furniture assembled.