"Thinking of making a projector setup" Topic

I have seen some really cool projector setups for interactive battlemaps and am thinking of trying to build one for my D&D group. I currently use Campaign Cartographer 3 with the cities and dungeon addons for my maps and would love to really go all out with a complete city of maps for the game. If anyone has used a projector setup or has any advise I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!
Dave

I'd offer my advice on the matter, but honestly, the projector setup we use is local university property, but is very nice. In addition to standard video and digital inputs, it also has a 'transparency' style overhead, that instead of projecting the image onto the wall, actualy has a digital camera over the 'light box'. We use this for displaying 'the big map', while the battle map is rolled out for fights.

As a display professional, let's just say that running a projector off a computer is dead easy. HOWEVER- the lamps are fiendishly expensive, and generally they lie about how many hours you get from them. So while the projectors are now far cheaper – the lamps cost an arm and a leg.

I was often offered an old projector from work to use at home, but always turned it down as a decent model will have a lamp cost of about $400. USD And I did not want to go through the effort of mounting the unit, then when I got used to it having to shell out the money for a new lamp.

And the cheaper ones will often need the room to be dark enough that it makes doping everything else a pain.

What he is talking about is a document camera in which you have a small video camera mounted vertically- then that signal runs through a projector. This means needing printouts of the maps.

The cheapest way to do it is to print out your maps in color on a transparency ata place like kinkos, and just find an old overhead projector to project them on a wall. Lamps for those cost 10-20 bucks if you buy them online.

or just find someone with a big plasma and run it thorugh that.

Are you thinking of projecting downwards -- so that the image is on the table and you can then move the minis around on the image?

I'm sure I've seen this on the web -- somewhere. But I would have thought you would get problems with shadows from the players when they move figures etc.

Large LCD screens are pretty cheap, you could probably have one of these flat, probably with a sheet of glass or plastic over the screen to stop scratching, and use this to display the map?

There's a setup on d20srd.org. Blocked at work so I can't link straight to it. It has the map projected onto the table and they move the minis around on it. Sweet.

Considering the cost of printing color maps, and the availability of quality pre-made maps out there, I can advantage in some sort of projection system. Since you're into miniatures, the only problem with over-head projection would be would be the shadows cast on the maps by objection on the table. I remember a thread about some one building a table like the briefing tale in Battlestar Galactic, the tread has a niftily picture, the one that is under lit. If you could project a picture under a transparent table top, of course I'm not sure about focus length, but that would be cool, but a large Plasma would be cost prohibitive for me at least right now….