so today we're going to unbox and test
this
weird little mini projector
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so this isn't normally the kind of
product i would even buy but i stumbled
across it on amazon while i'm searching
for digital projectors
and yeah so it's apparently a tiny
elephant shaped plastic digital
rechargeable projector that projects
from
microsd cards now
normally i'd just skip past that and
ignored it but there was something
really compelling about this which was
the price
this product was seven pounds something
seven pounds 19 i think or something
like that
including shipping it came to less than
10 pounds there were in fact other
examples of this which were priced
around the five pound mark but with
higher shipping so
it came out about the same either way so
less than 10 pounds
for a digital projector how good can
that possibly be
i actually thought i was going to be
ripped off here and either sent
something that just isn't this product
at all
or maybe send something that has a slot
that you slide a mobile phone into
and it projects from the brightness of
the screen itself on the mobile phone
but well if the packaging is to be
believed this has got buttons and
slots and things so i guess we're gonna
have to open it and have a look but
first let's just look around the
packaging so on the top we've got some
icons we've got uh
a play button we've got music word i
don't know if that means it can project
documents that's interesting
and yeah some sort of diary or
book i don't know why they've put these
on here on this side
we've got again
just some very generic icons on this
side we've got specifications so let's
have a close look at those
so attention not waterproof contains
optical components do not drop do not
bend
pull parts by brute force do not look
directly light source
to avoid eye injury contain small parts
children should be accompanied by
parents to use
focusing distance 0.3 to 2 meters
battery capacity 2 000 milliamp hours i
doubt it
charging method micro usb projection
size 6.7 to 80 inches
maximum brightness greater than 130 lux
at 6.7 inches projection maximum video
decoding capability 720p
i think that's talking about the files
it can read rather than the actual
resolution of the imaging component i'd
be very surprised if this is anything
more than 320
by 240. right without further ado
let's open up and see what we got
there's nothing else on the box
so
okay well i've seen projectors packaged
a bit like this before
and there it is remarkable
so we've got a micro usb cable
we have the projector itself
we'll just put that aside for a moment
we've got a qualified certificate
qc pass number 12 i don't think these
mean anything at all i think they just
print these in bulk and throw them in
the box
and then a manual kid's projector manual
with pretty much the same information
that was on the box
repeated but operating instructions yeah
okay well it's supposedly rechargeable
let's have a look at the device itself
it's got
well there is something in there because
i can see a micro usb
connector there um so
yeah and on the top here we've got
buttons we've got on off switch
various things which are all described
in the manual
well and there's not a lot else to see
so there's no
um there's no hdmi in or anything like
that there's no way to power this
directly from a live source it looks
like it will only play from
a card but if indeed it does anything at
all
well let's switch it on and see if it
does anything shall we
there's a light
and well i can see something going on
inside the
movie it said okay well
it's projecting something i think we
might have to turn the studio lights off
here to actually get anything out of
this
okay so with all of the studio lights
turned off and
the curtains drawn we got an image
projected on the wall there
that's at a distance of about maybe 75
centimeters
i'm still not getting it down to let's
see if we can actually get that focus to
something a bit sharper
that seems to be going the wrong way
maybe not
okay that is focusing to a
that's probably about maximum sharpness
but there we go so we've got something
going on there
and then now i can't read the
instructions let's just
press a few buttons see if anything
happens
no disc of course there's no there's no
sd card sure
study music
okay well it does appear to actually
have a projector
unit in there the quality i'm going to
say is not
it's not anything like good
but for 10 quid i'm actually really
impressed that this actually even has
something in there at all
so i think the next thing to do is i'll
put some video files on a card
and some photos and we'll give it a
little test okay so here we go i've got
a card in there with some files on there
to test
you have to create folders for the music
movies
pictures and study so we're on the movie
setting let's hit that and
play
now this was originally a widescreen 16
9
format it's been squeezed down to 4 3
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ratio
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okay and we can pause and resume
and then exit
okay the built-in voice is a bit
annoying
picture okay pictures
okay well it displays a picture i
presume if i had more than one it would
probably do a slideshow
picture okay
study we'll have a look at music music
is that a loop round
yes so you put a bunch of mp3s on there
and it will play them in a loop
um interesting
it appears to have crashed now
right study
hmm file list okay i put a word document
on there and a text file
and neither of those seem to have worked
i don't know what the file format is for
that i will consult the
comprehensive manual okay now i've got
this on the shelf behind me it's about
two meters away from the
wall maybe 1.75 meters away from the
wall
and i've refocused it to there just so
we can get an idea of what the actual
quality is like so let's just resume
that movie
that's interesting it's it's stuck
i've noticed it tends to i think that
might just be low battery to be fair
so here it is projecting at one meter in
a completely darkened room
and yeah the screen is actually nice and
bright when you've got it in
a completely dark room like this the
resolution is nothing special
i'm pretty sure that is 320 by 240 so
that problem we had there was stuttering
only seems to be fixed by a reboot i
have a feeling though that's to do with
the bit rate i'm using
for the video because that's actually a
720p video with quite a high bitrate so
i suspect if you rendered a cartoon or
something down to 320x240
especially put on this device if you
resize the video down to the
native resolution of this device i don't
suppose it would have very much trouble
interestingly the brightness is actually
adjustable so
that's on the lowest brightness now
still quite visible in a completely
darkened room
and then the highest brightness is
really nice and bright actually so in
fact we could throw that a bit further
away i'll just put that on the back wall
here and we'll just
have a look and see what that's like
there we go
so yeah then what i'm seeing on the
video screen on the camera is pretty
much what i'm seeing in this darkened
room so that's pretty much how i
perceive it
as well so hopefully that gives you an
idea
it's interesting that it keeps on auto
dimming i don't know if that's just
because it's running on battery
but anyway okay well i've got that on
charge and there's a little orange light
there it does appear to be charging
well i don't know if you're as surprised
as i am that this thing works at all
and does some stuff that's okay it's not
impressive
but for 10 quid that's actually
it's surprising that they've managed to
cram that in there really the design is
something that's really rather crazy but
the manual has something to say about
that
the manual says the projector is compact
lightweight the whole appearance of a
water-spraying little elephant is vivid
and lively
full of child-like fun besides it has a
small handle for children to grip
children can manually adjust the focal
length which improves children's actual
operating ability
the projector supports tf card which can
store third-party content such as
children's preschool video pictures
music and text
the projector is very easy and simple to
operate well
okay so just as a bit of fun
i actually think that that's i just
can't understand
how it's possible to make this and ship
it from china
for less than 10 pounds it's just
amazing it's just
kind of a little bit worrying to be
honest it appears to do what it's
supposed to do
that was a 720p video that we had
playing on there and obviously it's
downscaled it to the wrong
aspect ratio and probably maximum 320 by
240 resolution
but that's still pretty impressive for
this price point
so one more thing we should definitely
test while we're here is whether the
usb actually does anything in terms of
whether it's got a usb host in there or
whether that's
just usb charging i think that's just
usb charging i didn't hear
windows do anything there
so there's no so there's no device
obviously that's booted it up
plugging it into the main into an
external plugging it into
external wait a minute there's a usb
host
so not whoa so not only is this
that's amazing so not only is this usb
charging
but it's got a usb host for the card
so it it functions as an external card
reader so once you've installed the card
in there
you can open those folders and see the
files you put on them so
that's just further amazement that
they've actually crammed that in there
as well
i can't wait to see what's inside this
box so
we're going to carefully open it up and
see
what we've got inside of here
they've made the screws a little bit
hard to get to
i would otherwise use my new
multi-bit screwdriver set but they've
set them quite deep inside the plastic
so
tiny teeny little screws
okay and there is one screw on the
bottom there but i think i might leave
that
where it is until i've seen what's going
on
now i've got to be a little bit careful
here oh it's coming apart okay
right okay well there we go so well look
at that there is
actually a 18650 cell in there
there's a tiny little speaker eight ohm
speaker
over the other side there now we can see
here there's a
fresnel lens and a front silvered mirror
and the little projector unit here
which is presumably led and yeah it's
got an led
on a big heatsink and then just
underneath that
that ribbon cable is going to be going
to a little lcd
panel there well we could maybe power
this up while we've got it
open is it going to let me do that
so we might actually get a look at
what's going on here there we go
so there's a tiny little lcd transparent
screen there
fresnel lens in front front silvered
mirror
just with a optical just to bend the
optical path out the front lens there
that lens won't be
you know it's not going to be carl zeiss
lens or anything like that it's just a
a lens but let's put that there
and then we can get a look at this
host board
so i wonder if that's a standard screen
connector there because if that is a
standard screen connector there we could
put a raspberry pi
in here and connect that there instead
and then we could have a little
projected screen from a raspberry pi or
something so there's
lots of potential i think to hack this i
was hoping we might find some
unpopulated connectors or something on
the board here
but there doesn't appear to be very much
of that i was hoping we might find like
an
unpopulated um hdmi or vga or something
input it doesn't appear to be an awful
lot of that sort of thing
i'm not going to pull it apart any more
than that i don't think because i
actually
suppose if i take the card out
and should power it off really
let's just take that circuit board out
carefully now i'm gonna damage it if i
do because
it's all very modular it's interesting
how
much thought they've put into putting
this thing together so there's a little
transparent lcd screen
there is the main board
i presume that's going to be some sort
of little arm processor there
let's get a close look at that so that
you guys can
read the number on it but
yeah there we go so
all sorts of interesting stuff happening
inside there but anyway let's get it
back together for now
just to see if i can actually do this
without destroying it
screen goes in there pcb
everything's got its own little slot so
this is very
there's a fair bit of care and thought
has gone into the design here
which again makes it even more
impressive considering
the price of the product everything's
got its own little slot
that it sits into
be really careful here that i'm not
pinching cables or anything
yeah i think he's done it
let's just power that on and see if it
works before i screw it back together
yeah so we managed to do that without
killing it that was good
so i'm gonna put that back together and
then we'll have a little wrap up
so overall opinion what an interesting
little bit of tech
i can't in all honesty and good
conscience call this junk
because okay it's cheap and it's been
built down to a price although i don't
know how they did it for that price
and it's nothing special and it doesn't
perform
highly and so on but
there's a lot of stuff that's gone into
this and
it does what it's supposed to do and
assuming it's got the decent battery
life which it looks like it will do with
that 18650 in there
then for kids to watch cartoons in a
darkened room on a wall
why not it's if they break it
what have you lost it's kind of a shame
you can't plug an external source into
it because then we could do all kinds of
interesting stuff with it
i kind of wish i was ben heck in a way
because i'm sure he would know how to
hack this
and make it into a portable games
console or something like that
so if you want to see him do that maybe
you should pester him on one of his
videos and see how much he can hack it
i'm sure he'd love to
this anyway because it's kind of
ridiculous now i did go back and check
to see if these are still available on
amazon
and the price has gone up since i bought
it i bought this for less than 10 pounds
the price is now 25 pounds so i suspect
that bargain price that i got at the
very start there was either an error
or perhaps when the product had just
been listed and somebody
had put it at a low price just to
encourage a bit of sales or something
like that
can't find very many of these on amazon
now and they have gone up in price it's
25 pounds now but to be honest if you
wanted
these kind of components to make some
sort of projector project of your own
then 25 pounds would still not be a bad
price for something like that so i'm
happy enough with this it's an
interesting little gadget and certainly
serves its purpose i think that we had
some stuttering on the video
and the firmware inside didn't seem all
that stable
but i think some of that might be
because the video i was putting through
it was quite a high bit rate i think if
you
rendered some videos at 320 by 240 which
is probably
the native resolution of this thing um
cartoons or something like that they'd
be just fine
and actually giving that to kids on a
rainy day to
make a little cinema under a blanket or
something like that that would be quite
a lot of fun
so that's all i've got on this for now
if you've got any ideas about the
components or anything we could do for
hacking this then do let me know in the
comments
thanks for watching and i hope to see
you again soon
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you