Symbol Developing Laser Screen Projector

I think it would be great to have a video projection on a handheld -- shoot, I'd even settle for a monochrome one if reasonably priced. Imagine how much more of a laptop replacement a PDA would be if you could throw up a 15" screen on a wall (or the back of an airplane seat) and just start typing on your fold-out Bluetooth keyboard with mouse.

I'd love a CF module or sled with extra power pack. That would be the bees knees (that's what 31 year-old's say instead of "phat")

oh yes this is awesome, but of course it cant replace a lcd. or will there be "fold-out-walls"?

Markus Dresch (www.palmside.com)

Sounds like the killjoy expert above has it right, though. Too much power use. Maybe we could come back when we have fuel cells. Some day.

Millions of people bought the m130. Millions of people are happy with it. You've expressed your negative opinion of dithering multiple times. We understand that you don't like dithering. No one cares, especially not those millions who are happy with their m130s. Its time to move on.

anybody knows the number?

You could always hold it up to your eye and go blind, but a proximity sensor of some kind (if it can read bar-codes, then it would have a sensor) could prevent that. That way, even if it was scanning into your eye, the device wouldn't work unless it detected that it was far enough awyay to be safe.

just speculating...

The problem the Laser Display Industry has when ever we want to stage a public show( which generally use Class 3B and 4 lasers), is to convince the Health and Safety authorities that the scanning mechanism will not fail. Because it is pretty much impossible to guarantee that the scan system is fail proof, legislation states that in the US no scanning can take place at audience level, and here in the UK the guidelines state that the laser must be 3m above ground level.

I'm interested to see how Symbol solve this issue...

I live in an age where I don't think we can *ever* say something is impossible. (Just look at Liberty. Everyone said a GameBoy emulator was impossible on the Palm, and yet we did it)

I suspect they may be using the TI Digital Light Mirrors to create the images which may well have better fail safe properties to the mechanical scanners we us in the light industry. (They will need to if they are going to put into phones and toys)

My feeling is still that the display would not appear very bright, for if it was possible, with an acceptable output, laser projection monitors would be in there competing with LCD Projectors, and Plasma Screens, that we all know about in the home entertainment arena of electronics. - I may be wrong of course, ...but I believe Sony and Philips were researching Laser Projectors many years ago.

Yes, laser retina scanning is good, but then again it uses a harmless laser of uWatts, as it only needs to project an image several mm square over a very short distance into the eyeball.

All I wanted to do in making my original comments is make it clear that I think they have several important issues to address before their "concept product" becomes a reality, so we don't all get excited putting it on this year's Santa List.

James Stewart
Laser Visuals Limited
United Kingdom

"miniature projectors" makes no claim to resultant image size. If you're only looking for monitor or TV sized 640x480, this could 'project' that from a 2-5 foot distance it would seem.

Outside office hours it might be nice to have PalmReader projected on the ceiling above your bed, and have BigClock display the time on the ceiling when the alarm (and subsequent snooze cycles) go off in your hotel room.

Now watch how many people project nasty-grams to inconsiderate drivers, on that rear of the vehicle in front of the target driver.

Or projecting some appropriate 'signage' on the back of the police officer walking back to his car, post ticket.

Or the running commentary quips/captions in the movie theater by the projection PDA toting teen in the front row.

Maybe it's better that Symbol keep the price of this as obscene as their current barcode scanners.

-Craig Bowers

Also, I noticed that Symbol's page gives a figure of 150 and 50mW for power consumption. I know that the support electronics would draw some of that juice, but that still is way over the figure of 5mW that you gave for the safe limit. The share-price argument just got a little stronger in my mind.

You are assuming that the display can display arbitrary raster content brightly. That's not necessary in order to be useful, and they don't claim to be able to do that.

There are plenty of other things they could do. For example. they could be using a linear arrangements of a larger number of little lasers and scan that. That would result not only in safe power levels but also improved refresh.

The reason for this is that the peak of the human eye's sensitivity is at the 555nm wavelength - which appears as bright lime green. The solid state green lasers that are used in the display industry produce a wavelength pretty near to this at 532nm. Red diode lasers generally produce wavelengths of 630-670nm, which appear much dimmer for the same given power.

The problem with Green lasers at the moment is that they are more complex than simple red diodes, larger, and consume more energy to produce a beam of light.

I look forward to seeing one of the projectors in action, but I suspect it would not appeal to the crowd that moaned about the brightness on the m505 not being up to scratch. (In fact as an m505 user myself, I thought the m505 backlight was fine - but that's a different can of worms!)

YES! That would be wonderful.