Visiting Maradin - an Israeli laser-based projection chipset company

Maradin is an Israeli company, working on laser-based projection chipset for pico projectors. Their CEO, Matan Naftali, was kind enough to invite me to their office in Caeseria, Israel.

A bit about the company.

Maradin are working on the scanner-mirror part of the laser projector. They are not building a whole projector module, but rather just the scanner-mirror part. They are using their experience with MEMS engineering to create an efficient solution. In fact that's what this company's IP is all about - an efficient scanner-mirror. They say they can control their mirror better and with less electricity than any other company.

Maradin has raised 4M$ (the last round, 3M$, in March 2009). They hope that this money will bring them to actual sales, and so remains on a low burn rate (they currently have only 8 employees).

Maradin's plan is to sell their "chip" to other companies that'll integrate it into their projector modules. They are still in an early stage, and plan is to get samples out in 1Q 2010, and a commercial product by 3Q 2010. They hope to sign deals with module makers before that, so they expect a projector product based on their tech in 3Q 2010.

Maradin's laser-based projection tech

Like I said, Maradin claim to have a good control over their scanner mirror. This means that the mirror movement is more precise, and uses much less energy than other solutions. It also allows for a simpler projector design. For example, Maradin can scan in an interlaced method. This allows them to use a 30Hz refresh rate, and still get a good picture - half the refresh rate of the competition (and so half the energy required). They do support a 60Hz progressive option, too.

The chip supports SVGA resolution (800x600), and can actually go to higher resolution (I guess in future versions). It sports more than 85% light efficiency.

I haven't been able to see a demonstration - it's too early for that... Matan claims that their photo quality is good and the speckle is very low. I'll have to take his word for it.

Maradin-based projectors will be smaller and more efficient than the competition (which is currently mostly Microvision and bTendo).

Matan estimates that their scanner-mirror will cost about a tenth of what an LCoS panel or DLP chip costs. But the rest of the laser-based module is more complicated to make than with DLP or LCoS, so at the end of the day, a laser-module will cost about the same as a DLP/LCOS module. But it will be much smaller, more efficient and with better resolution. And no need to focus...

How Maradin sees the pico projector market

Matan has some interesting views on the pico projector market. It's too early to tell, obviously, but he thinks that today there is a lot of emphasis on sharing and collaborating. So when two team workers are working together for example, a small projector is very useful. If these devices will be cheap (sub 100$), companies may buy them for each team or room - to enhance the work environment and efficiency of teams.

Projectors do not have to make large displays - if you just want to share your computer display or work together on a projet, it might be enough to project a small (20") display - in which case the brightness of the small projectors is less of an issue.

Projectors can also be used for digital signage and advertisements - a bright future, although here I'm not sure if we'll all benefit from such solutions.

It all depends on the availability of cheap, efficient and bright projectors. That's where Maradin hopes to shine...