Gamers have always had the natural habit of breaking things down, never is this more obvious than in the “custom pc” and “pc overclocking” market but could the future be in overclocked pico projector’s. If you are unfamiliar with these ideas (being here I presume you know about overclocking and custom pc cases but humour me) they are essentially the act of modifying your computer with modifications running from cosmetically altering the computer cases (often with perspex windows, LED’s and cold cathode lights) to performance based modifications (such as turning up the power that your computer gives to its internal organs such as the CPU and the RAM – memory, by turning up these voltages, amongst many other slight changes you can essentially get more power out of the units, much like modifying a car engine.) There is a whole world of pc modification out there but that is just a modern phenomenon which highlights generations of amateur technologists breaking down technology and rebuilding it into something new, modifying its original use or adding to it. Hackaday.com is a prime source of project’s like this, whether it be based on something as little as a BeagleBoard or as big as a homemade telsa coil, anyway I digress. Overclocking a pico projector is a new idea that has basically come out of a discussion I had with a fellow technologist.

Especially obvious with the pico projector’s that are simplistic in construct, they essentially are only comprised of several parts, that is a small LCD Screen (for most pico’s but not laser ones) or DLP unit (texas instrument based micro projectors) and an ultrabright LED (varying brightness between units, not all use LED’s.) This simplicity, coupled with the now mass market availability, multiplied by the cool-factor of a projector unit that’s as big as your phone makes me think of numerous hacker projects a pico could fit in, as well as several ways to mess about with them to try and overclock a micro projector.

I wonder what’s the biggest visible screen someone can make a pico the size of an average mobile phone display? perhaps a more active heating system could bring about a pico with nearly as much clout as a multimedia projector. Swap out the micro-projector light source for something more beefy and up the cooling and you could have yourself a neat unique gadget. Couple a load of these together and you could have a whole new type of projector. cell based hd pocket projector rig anyone?

What would you modify about pico projector’s if you could? would you ever overclock your microprojector (we use the word overclock broadly, we know it more refers to the adjusting of cpu clock speeds/multipliers.)