Pico Projector news and resources

Microvision announced today that they raised $5 million from private investors. The lead investor is a Canadian based real estate developer (Shmuel Farhi, from Farhi Holdings). The investors bought 3.34 million shares at a price of $1.494 per share and warrants to purchase 1 million shares at $2.12.

Just a couple of weeks ago Microvision announced their financial results, and the company's cash decreased by $6.2 million in the quarter to $6.8 million. It's good that the company found a solution to its cash issues, even if this may prove to be quite short term.

Pioneer today announced their automobile heads-up-display powered by Microvision's PicoP engine. They call it the Carrozzeria Cyber Navi AR heads-up display, and there are two available models, the AVIC-VH99HUD and the AVIC-ZH99HUD. The display itself looks like a 37" (90x30 cm) display viewed from 3 meters. It will launch in July 2012, but we do not know the price yet.

Here's a long video showing the system in action:

We just posted about the new iPhone/iPod accessory projector from Micron, the PopVideo. Quicklogic announced that this projector uses their VEE technology. VEE (or Visual Enhancement Engine) dynamically adapts the projected content to the viewing environment, and so improves the viewability (perceived brightness). 

The VEE is used automatically, but you can turn it on or off manually using an iPhone application (bundled with the PopVideo).

Micron's PopVideo is an iPhone/iPod accessory projector. It features qHD resolution (960x540) and a built-in battery that lasts for 2 hours. We don't have any more technical details...

The PopVideo is now shipping for $99. It supports iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation). iOS 5.0 or greater is required.

Here's our monthly best-selling pico-projectors list for the beginning of May 2012. We're using data from Amazon.com, which seems to be selling the most wide range of pico projectors. This list does not include embedded modules in mobile phones or cameras. Here we list the top ten projectors, with the price and position in Amazon's best-selling electronics product (which gives a better idea of the actual selling volume):

1. Optoma PK301 ($303, #580)
2. Optoma PK201 ($239, #708)
3. Microvision ShowWX+ HDMI ($369, #1,403)
4. 3M MP225a ($283, #2,628)
5. Aaxa P1 Jr ($108, #3,001)
6. SVP PP03 ($99, #3,103)
7. WowWee Cinemin Swivel ($169, #3,305)
8. Optoma PK320($449, #3,498)
9. Aaxa P4 ($328, #3,601)
10. Optoma PK120 ($198, #3,695) 

The list is quite different from last month. Optoma is still the dominant brand, but this month we have more budget projectors in the top lst from Aaxa, SVP and WowWee.

Here's something fun - Household Hackers uploaded a short video showing how you can build your own projector for just $3 from a cardboard box and lenses and your mobile phone. It won't be the highest quality or brightest projector system, but this is rather cool:

Intersil is introducing a new low cost pico projector system, the Pico-qHD. They say it's the industry's smallest production-ready LED-based LCoS Pico Projector solution. It uses Micron's E330 compact 5.5 cc (7mm height) qHD (960×540) optical engine and is based on Intersil's new ISL97901, a fully-integrated buck/boost RGGB LED driver customized for pico projector display applications.

The system can be driven up to 1.5A LED current - enabling pico projector engines with brightness levels exceeding 20 lumens.