Digital Micromirror Devices - in-depth operation 

That is awesome DMD detail! Thanks for mentioning me.

These techniques are also handy for driving multiple LEDs direct from a microcontroller - a rough PWM followed by a few short pulses on each channel in turn, e.g. you can do 8 LEDs at 13 bits on an 8 bit PIC, for super-smooth fades.

one of the best video i have ever seen in my life for learning about these chips , thanks.

Great video, really in depth and scientific! Never thought that much complexity goes into just displaying the gray spectrum.

I'm 4 years late, but I might as well say it, thx for the video, it brings about a lot of interesting information.

Thank you for your video! With this, I finally understand how DLP works.

And another example how humans are amazing. Not me.. but in general. The fact that people come up with technology like that blows my insignificant mind.

Thanks so much for sharing and for such a technical description of its operation.

~4-5 uS to move a mirror is mind boggling! I thought for sure it would be in the milliseconds range. Excellent video. explains so much.

now this a doc i can relax to....very nice TI 720P chip

Arcanely interesting. Your whiteboard visuals help.

I love your videos! But this one is the best and greatest one! It' like a university grade class video!!! Thank you very much!!!

Great work ! Thanks for your time and explanations..

Very cool video! Great stuff!

Thank you tesla500 - That was a great video. Cheers!!

This is very useful explanation of DLP projector. Thank you. I am wondering what if using an R, G, B, (or plus white) LED array as the light source instead of using a wheel spinning in front of a white light? Thanks.

Very neat ! Thanks for sharing your knowledge:) it's very appreciated

Wow, thank you! I love your little gadget there. I am a laser optical engineer where did you acquire that DLP chip and driver board I have been looking for such a streamline style for prototyping.

Very interesting. That thumbnail in my video suggestions just got you a new sub. I mean - ponies AND DMDs. How cool is that?

Great video! How would one illuminate it with a laser? Could one combine three DLP chips and three lasers to create a projector with a very high quality image? I imagine this would not be a very cost/material/work efficient method, but would it produce beautiful images?.

Did you try filming the DMD chip using your high-speed camera through a microscope or alike? I think that'd be interesting to try.

Thank you very much for your video. It was really cool. Could you please tell me which evaluation board can you use? what is the name of the board? I want to order a board for it. Maybe its also possible to connect and control a DMD with Arduino or with Rasperry Pi? I really need backup and I would be happy to hear from you. I would be very grateful. Thank you very much!

Hey tesla500, do you know why no DMDs seem to be made with something like a Bayer filter on top for colour reproduction, instead of the filter wheel setup?

could you try to use this as a low cost adaptive optics to cancel out atmospheric distortion?

A very interesting video. Thank you.

Is there a video of one of these moving under high magnification?

2:13 The marking on the corner of the DMD chip actually says 1N not IN

hi :D where did you got this development kit from :D?

Could we have a video where the image on the chip changes throughout?

Can we interface a pi with a DMD or any other processor manually ? Sorry for the n00b question .

Is there a way to make a backlit (or as close to it as possible) DLP. seems like it would make a nice full HD, HUD display that can be made into a google glass like device (How fast can RGB LED's cycle through colors? )

so what if instead of a lamp you used a laser blown up to the size of the dmd chip, this way it would be easier to remove the color wheel effect by stacking the beams so they all come in at the same angle, doing so could create a huge improvement in brightness, refresh rate, ect. the only problem would be to find high quality lasers that arent grainy.

I thoroughly enjoyed your talk. I did notice that you are as bad as I am with having a million different tabs on your computer. Maybe it is that great minds link alike.

So why does my color wheel on my projector-and-screen-in-a-box (Mitsubishi WD-60737) slow down for 3D display?

@tesla500 I got a a chip like this from TI. How you load the images ? I mean which software do you use to load data ? , I use supplied GUI program and MATLAB also. I am behind the desired refresh rate like 10 times. Do you think this is the reason that I cannot catch the data load rate as the device supports. Or if you use a program which program are you using to communicate with the chip ? Can you write the name of it ? And has it be in FPGA programming language ?

Make a high speed 3d scanner with the dmd, does that qualify as an interesting project?

I remember reading about this technology in the early 90s. My thought then was "yeah, good luck with that" thinking it sounded as far fetched as fusion power. Is it obsolete by now though?

DLP is pretty skookum tech. The fact that they can produce those tiny little mirrors with so much precision is incredible.

I'm surprised no one has yet to mention that you're using vista still, I think it might be time for an upgrade ;)

Very interesting video, thanks for sharing! I have used a DLP projector to expose a screen-printing screen. It worked well but I guess with a dedicated unit like the one you have it would work better (true static image, no color wheel, better wavelengths possible (closer to UV)). Another application I read about (I think it was on the TI website) is to expose PCB for small scale production runs. I have not tried this because I think the resolution vs. minimal focusing distance of my projector would make the quality not sufficient enough.

try using 3 of them focusing on a single point before going through the focus lens to your screen. You will be able to use one color for each. a 3 way projection.

Well i'd love to see it refreshing and changing images in slow motion as close as you can get to the actual mirrors. side angle probly would give the best contrast.

I was thinking about spectroscopy of deep sky objects, normally they use stencils you can get rid of stencils by using dlps and actively selecting an object on the go with one of these, however not sure if someone makes a big enough chip for the larger telescopes out there Edit: Sure enough there are a few papers describing what i just said above

Is it possible to project these directly into your eyes? Some of the problems with Virtual Reality headsets could be greatly improved. Firstly, latency is far lower for a DMD. Secondly, the lenses required cause lots of distortion and a sense of 'tunnel vision', a direct projection, perhaps off a slightly curved mirror could greatly improve the focal problems. Thirdly, small movements in the light source could allow tracking of your eyes, effectively giving a very high resolution but only where your eye is looking. Finally, contrast would be very high and each pixel would not be split into sub-pixels.

how about to use 3 DMD without colorwheel, like in Digital cinema projectors? Or this to expensive?

Short pulses! Brilliant :) Thanks

I was hoping to see a high speed macro/microscope clip of the DMD doing it's thing.

Flim exposure or pcb exposure? Would be interesting but likely non practical. A DMD should actually be able to pulse many optical fibers independent of each other. Still unsure about uses, maybe some strange test jig? Could you give a full spectrum scanner a try? Both with full spectrum illumination and selective sensor and variable spectrum light - source? Doing both would reveal luminescent effects; both source and output wavelength/frequency.

Aha, now I finally understand why my RGBRGB 144Hz projector has such crappy temporal dithering! Didn't think about the minimum mirror switch time.

5,000 fps with projectors? where do i sign up for my new gaming monitor

Are there any boards like this for sale?

DMD chips for full spectrum imaging sounds really cool, I wonder what wattage of light it requires to get a decent quantity of illumination? also /)

Building a hyperspectral camera out of this sounds like an interesting project

How about these things in VR headsets?

Instead of a color wheel, why not use three dld chips through three color filters, red green and blue, and then combine them like LCD projectors do? Wouldn't that increase the resolution of each color/pixel?

Twilight Sparkle always has been big on education...

A dirrect PCB mask imaging could be a intresting applucation, first thing that comes to mind

Does the DMD have USB connection?

What's the "1N" mean? Mine says 5N.

Watching this again after a few years. Just a heads-up. You might want to remove that OneLight Spectra link in the description. It got a bit rude. lol

Oh, I didn't know there were printers that could use DMDs too!

DMD device leaks very, very little light and has a better contrast ratio and brightness levels than LCD projectors have. When any of the micro-mirrors are in the off state, the light from these mirrors hits the wall of the optics. White segment is a very small piece of filter wheel. I know something about these projectors, as I have modified them extensively for vision research. Projector light source passes through the spinning color wheel, then on through optics and a small homogenizer which creates a highly uniform light source. A polished glass block with an angled side creates a beam splitter. Design of the beam splitter is different for each manufacturer, and is designed for a particular angle defined by each manufacturer. This is how all DMD projectors are illuminated.

Did I miss the cat making a cameo in this video? It makes an appearance in almost every other garage video....

I really wonder why noise looks like on this display

I think the CastAR works this way. Next project make VR glasses :D

Tesla500: In projectors a special prism is used to angle the light just right into the mirrors so the lens can be mounted close Also Tesla500: I'll use a bic lighter for this example 😂

He speaks!

There's no sound!

you should do a 3d scanner

I'm struggling to find information on running one of these as a spectrometer. Any idead?

its same thing when film and light source to project image, but now days its digital without need a film like in early 1900's ....all they did add spinning color wheel that would do the trick to get color image but only downside is....light only go this far in bounce from mirror ...too much brightness ...it degrade the image quality...too much darkness will make hard to see from any angle

Yeah, don't click on that OneLight Spectra link.

lol. Twilight sparkles cutie mark

Originally all DMD mirrors were developed and patented by Texas Instruments. This was actually classified technology and only available to the US military. TI is still the only manufacturer of these devices which are fabricated using MEMS technology. Every DMD projector manufacturer in the world licenses this technology from TI, buys the DMD device and chip set from TI. Chip requires a 6Gb/second data stream to project a full color moving image with the DMD. Filter wheels in projectors typically spin at 6,000 RPM and are made of 4 glass segments.

Is that Twilight's cutie mark?

Aaand watching this on a DLP beamer...

all this is great....until your color wheel explodes, and the vibration from an unbalanced glass wheel spinning at 10000+ rpm makes your tv dance off of its stand....

3:10 69 lol

Lol. Oh. Nevermind. I see

Mirrors are Magic… (scnr)

Anyone think it low-key sounds like Elon musk lol??

[Insert brony comment here]

your movements are not precise and im scared as fuck for that dmd if you touch it.