If you own a projector portable or regular, you might wonder sometimes how you can use those expensive business tools on the weekend.  Traveling too much and too many meetings can sometimes keep you away from friends and family, and a projector can be a great way to bring people together on the weekend just like they attract people like mosquitoes to a light for meetings during the week.

I mean that mosquitoes to the light analogy in the nicest possible way. 

Instead of spending $20 - $30 per person to get into a movie theater (not counting gas), you can have your friends and family over for an outdoor movie this summer.

Its relatively cheap and easy to setup with most of the things you might already have, if you have the key ingredient of a projector.

Here’s a few shots of our last party.  This was actually put together for my Son’s 8th birthday party.  We had lots of chairs and a few people brought some of their own.  (lots of soccer parents)

Rear view of screen. note the cargo net and the dark sheet behind the main screen sheet do not have to be perfect, they just help the white sheet to reflect the images from the projector as opposed to allowing the light to pass straight through the sheet.

What you will need for a Backyard Movie with a Projector

• Very Large (bigger the better) white bed sheet (thread count doesn’t matter much)
• Very large (same size as the white sheet) dark bed sheet (blue or black are best)
• A come along ratchet or pull tie down strap set (possibly a couple of these.
• Clothes pins(20- 40)
• Clothes line or some other tip of rope thin enough for a clothespin to hold
• Surround sound system
• DVD Player
• extension cords, and surge protectors
• A Hand full of rugs (to be used to cover cords so people do not trip)
• Some sort of candles, oil lamps, etc for light and for repelling bugs
• bug spray
• blankets
• lots of chairs
• A Movie
• Bonus Items
• A flexible cargo net (this is for helping to hold the sheet if the wind picks up
• a ladder with a platform step on the top large enough to hold the dvd player and projector
• popcorn
• drinks of your choice (alcohol or not depending on your parties preferences or tastes.  We’re not talking a knock down drag out boozer of a party sending half the party to the klink or drug rehab after, but a beer or glass of wine while watching a movie under the moon and stars can be a nice touch. )

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I wanted to follow up on a point I made earlier in a different post. When you do a lot of mind mapping, or when you are actively involved in a number of meetings, a projector is usually present in your home office. I’m referring to your main office not necessarily the office in your actual home.

Sometimes you have to travel and you can always take those projectors with you. Sometimes you’re traveling for off-site meetings with customers and sometimes it’s with your own team just in a different setting. Sometimes it’s for personal reasons.

I have known executives to take a company projector home to use it for personal reasons. I wouldn’t advise this, however you could rent your own projector for personal reasons. For example a few years ago I use my own personal projector that I own for my company, to show a movie for my son’s birthday party. We set up a screen outside, and we displayed the movie on the screen like a dark. I used a computer surround sound system for the sound of the movie.

It worked great and it made for a good theme for the birthday party too.

Sometimes is not entertainment, but you may need a projector to deal with family meetings are complex discussions with your own family members. In these cases you can use tools like MindManager and other planning software and display the plans upon a blank white wall with a projector. Now if you didn’t happen to bring a projector with you when you went to see your family a detail of a long ways away, you can turn to Projector123.com.

They provide projectors around the country, and are recently branching out into new areas such as their Denver projector rental offices, or their Colorado Springs projector rental options, or even their Salt Lake City projector rental programs.

Regardless there is no reason why you shouldn’t be only use the skills and talents and technologies that you’ve learned to use in the office in many situations outside of the office without having to invest the money that your office did in that equipment.

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There was a great gadget at CES this year that really showed how convergence could bring out the inner super geek in attendees.  It was the R2-D2 DVD Projector from Nikko Home Electronics, a specialist in RC Cars and vehicles.

This is a very functional little droid.  It offers a built in projector that displays an image right out of R2-D2’s eye socket.  Instead of a semi transparent, holographic image, this projector instead provides a more terrestrial flat image on a wall or a projection screen.  The display image can range from 24 inches to 80 inches.

But that’s not all, this droid also packs a CD/DVD player that will play music or a video through that projector. 

You can control your droid with a remote control shaped liked the millennium falcon even with a pop out/slide out keypad.

And not even the rebel alliance can get by without making their droids compatible with an iPod.  So R2-D2 has a little docking bay that hides or pops out of the belly of the unit so that you can play your iTunes or even see the video display of MP4 videos through the projector.

Now this isn’t just some shaped like a robot type of device that you might see in Radio Shack, this little guy is actually pretty functional.  The remote control can make R2go forward, backwards, right turn, left turn and pivot turns and the head of the unit (with the projector) can swivel 90 degrees to the right and 180 degrees to the left.

The unit plays 11 different random R2-D2 sound effects, and one of the effects plays each time a compartment opens.  The device even has a memory card reader that will let you project images with the unit anywhere in the house.  When I say anywhere that includes the ceiling as R2 can recline his legs so that the projector will point at the ceiling at a 65 degree angle.

R2 has a built in 20 watt stereo system and an Fm wireless audio transmitter as well.

It looks like a toy and is a lot of fun, but really you getting a lot of functional electronics components converged into your Star Wars fantasy gadget for just $2500 (which isn’t too much more than a decent projector in the first place)

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“A South Korean company developed a coin-size laser video projector module that can fit into portable gadgets such as mobile phones and digital cameras.”

Iljin Display has come up with a projector that can be built into a cell phone. Iljin expects about 5% of cell phones will offer a built in projector by 2010.

On a humorous note, 2020 will be an even more interesting year. In 2020, Airports will ban cell phones with built in light sabers.

The Korea Times : Phone to Carry Video Projector

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