PeauProductions

One of my customers Gabriel Giacomini, who recently built a huge 10 x 3 meter wall in Brazil used the LED-LP technique which is typically not done often and never before on such a large setup.  I found out what LEDs he used, and decided to offer them up on my store where they have been for a couple months now.

The LEDs are OSRAMS FH4550 and are 850nm.  The reason why they work so well and can be used in LED-LP setups is that they have a VERY narrow half beam angle of only 3 degrees.  This allows you to place them far apart from each other, in Gabriel’s case he placed them over 3 meters apart.

I recently traveled to Los Angeles to work on a angled touch screen for a DJ who wanted to use the multitouch interaction during a show to mix beats.  We setup a screen that was spaced 42 inches on the longest side, and we decided to go with the LED-LP technique using the narrow LEDs.  We calculated the spacing minimum we’d need in order to get the beams of the LEDs to converge once the projected image started (since it was a 3 degree half angle, the distance was about 6.5 inches from edge and we spaced them about every 0.4cm with 0.6cm or so being the maximum).

Below are some pictures and a video of the LEDs all wired up and a custom camera from my store with a vari-focal lens on it:

So this was a test I did awhile back. Bought a large 120″ x 80″ sheet of Endlighten for a little over $3k just to see how far the 850nm LED Ribbon lights could travel through it before the light was too dim to track. At the time the only LED Ribbon available was the 390 ribbon, whereas now the brighter 5050 ribbon is available.  Evonik recently posted some info which would have greatly helped:

Grade L: For application widths up to 24″

Grade XL:  For application widths up to 51″

Grade XXL: For application widths up to 78″

The Test:

• 120″ x 80″ Sheet of Endlighten (pretty sure it was XL but may have been L)
• 10 meters of 390 Ribbon (two 5 meter reels) wrapped around all the edges of the Endlighten.
• PS Eye Camera modified with 850nm band pass filter on a tripod

Below are the pictures we captured:

As you can see above we had a bit of fun standing behind it.

The crucial thing we learned was that the Ribbon didn’t travel much more than 17 inches from the edge until the light was too dim to use for DSI.  Thus the shortest distance of your screen must be less than 34 inches (or roughly 3 feet).  This translates into the largest screen able to be done for a DSI setup to be a 50 inch 16:10 setup.