Contacted MicroVision over the weekend about my problems, nothing back from them yet. Might have to ring them tomorrow.
Device worked great with my iPhone 4, didn’t try the iPad. For those of you having issues, are you using an app that supports video out? Here’s the procedure I used to get video:
- Power on projector before connecting your device
- Once the splash screen is displayed, connect device via cable (may display “ready to use” message on splash screen)
- Play video on Youtube (“video is being played on TV” or something like that is displayed on your device), you should get video through the projector
I also have received the “this device is not compatible” message, but it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. I’ve learned to ignore this message from using it with my car adapter.
I tried playing videos from my camera roll and watching a photo slideshow. Worked great. Played a movie off my networked hard drive using AirVideo was awesome.
Bought “Display Out” through Cydia so I could mirror out video without restriction.
Really neat device!
I had contacted Microvision over the weekend about none of my iOS devices working and they got back to me today.
They had me try a few things which I had already tried. Rep said it sounded like I had a defective cable and they are shipping me a new cable.
He said he would test the new cable first and make sure it works. Maybe its a common issue they are seeing w/ their cables.
I also was unable to get it working with the provided ipod/iphone/ipad cable. I even tested it with an extra cable I got off of amazon (didn’t realize at the time that it came with a cable). Tested with iphone4 and ipad1 with no luck 
Got ahold of mine today and played with it on my iPhone. I love the fact that being laser light, it drives my wife’s dog crazy.
Anyway, the only problem I have is not anticipating that it wouldn’t readily connect to my laptop. Yes, I screwed up and didn’t pay attention to the VGA cable not being included. And the fact that the VGA dock costs a full HALF of what the projector itself cost drives me up the wall. Is there no way us geek folks can solve this problem with some creative adaptoring or something.
Hell, if someone can find the pinouts on the connector and source them from a supplier, we could MAKE a VGA cable with little effort. The dock can’t possibly be doing anything special to the video signal (it’s not even powered). Let’s problem solve this, people!
Add me to the list of purchasers that cannot get any of my Apple devices to work. I have an itouch 2g, 3g and an ipad 2. No ready prompt when plugging into the unit.
Got mine today.
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Battery life is pretty much as-advertised: I ran through 90% of the first charge in approx. 80 minutes.
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Image is amazing in dark environments. In bright environments, this projector just doesn’t have the strength to overwhelm the environmental lighting. It disappears almost entirely when directed towards a wall with direct lighting from another source. This was what I expected in bright environments, though it’s ability in dark is about the best I could expect.
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I have somewhat light-sensitive eyes, and do have some issue with the reflected light from laser pointers; I was hoping that this would be at least a bit better, but unfortunately I do have the same eye-strain-like issues from this projector as with a laser pointer. So, if you have a hard time with looking at the point on a laser pointer, note that this won’t be much better.
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I have it working with videos on my iTouch 3G, though I have not successfully gotten photos working. It does recognize the connection, but it just doesn’t put the image over to the projector.
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Tested this with my PS2, connecting via the RCA plug and routing audio to headphones. Playing on a 6-foot screen works surprisingly well.
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Text is almost a universal issue; I think it’s 50% the resolution being significantly smaller than we are used to, while 50% being the laser light. On the PS2, text was generally a bit blurry, but it was decently worse here.
Now, I honestly bought this as a toy, so all of this was really finding out what I can and cannot do. I’ll be doing it a bit more through the week, where I can do some “field” testing with some programs I wrote. (for some potential future uses)
Overall, I’m just fine with this projector; the biggest problem I have is that the house I live in has almost no white or off-white walls.
This device works great on my iPod Touch 4th Gen 64 GB (yes it is Jailbroken).
I’m using a program I got off Cydia that allows the projector to display whatever is being displayed on the iPod.
So I can see my home screen, browse facebook, watch youtube videos, purchase more items on woot, etc. and everything will be displayed on the projector.
I believe, if I’m not mistaken, it’s called mirroring. Where anything displayed on the iPod is “mirrored” onto the projector.
I think that it could be a setting on the iDevice (although I must admit I have no idea which one). I initially tried mine with an iPhone 4 and had the same outcome. The iPhone said it was outputting but the projector just showed the startup screen. I then tried it on another iPhone 4 and it worked perfectly. It also worked fine on my iPad 2.
Have not tried it with 3rd party apps such as netflix, but I am hopeful. For those of you who had asked HBOGO has disabled any sort of output. (Not sure I understand the reasoning behind this. HBO is perfectly fine with you streaming their content as long as you are required to watch it on a 9.7" screen?)
I was very pleasantly surprised with the light output of this little thing. I have dark curtains and this thing turns my room into a movie theater.
Connected my Wii to this and it works, but there is a noticeable drop in the frame rate VS playing on the TV that makes it almost impossible to play. There’s also a slight amount of lag. Anything we can do about this?
Also, is there a way to swap out the ugly splash image?
Projector came today, able to project photos from by iphone 3G and MLB.TV with my ipad2 using the included cable. Also able to watch MLB.TV on my ipod touch, 4g. Like the instuctions said, turn on projector, insert cable with ipad/iphone already on, wait to see "“ready to use” alert, press play. Working better than I hoped.
Mine also didn’t work. The blue power light turned on, but there was no laser output.
I emailed Microvision directly and the Customer Service Manager emailed me back within 15 minutes. He agreed to exchange my projector, no questions asked. Since I need it as a gift in 2 weeks, he even offered to expedite things by mailing me the new projector before receiving my return. All I have to do is send him the Tracking Number.
So far, I am VERY impressed by their Customer Service and would recommend this projector on that alone.
If you still don’t hear back, try emailing them directly (rather than using the form).
Just received my Pico projector today.
Also, I am just one of the lucky one that have a chance to order the VGADock from Amazon for $20.00 and it also arrived today.
Below are the reviews of this projector use with different products:
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Apple “I” products. A lot of user here claimed that the 30pin connector doesn’t work.
No, it works perfectly. You just need to know your Apple product more, it’s not the fault of the Pico projector’s cable, it’s the limitation of the “I” products. If you want to know why Apple put that limitation there, please ask Steve Jobs. Mostly it is because of the DRM rights. So with your factory Apple “I” product, most likely you are not be able to “mirror” the phone top or pad top of your device by using the Pico projector. At this moment only limited apps are able to output video through that 30pin connector. Apps like Netflix, YouTube, AirVideo will show video through that 30pin after you choose the video file to play. If you really want mirroring on your “I” products, you need to jailbreak your device, and choose the TVout option and you are good. -
Some user has question about what ATSC tuner to use with this projector in order to make it a big screen tv. I can tell you that it is so easy to turn this projector into a huge screen TV. Most of us here has gone through the DTV conversion couple years ago and I believed that you might have one or two DTV converter box now sitting in your house collecting dust since you already have purchased a new slim LCD TV. So go to your storage and locate that DTV converter box and hook it up to the projector using the yellow coded composite cable and voila you now have a brand new hugh screen TV, for sure you still need to have an antenna and also speakers hook up to the converter box in order to make the system complete.
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Lastly, is the use of theVGADock with the Pico projector. I can say, this projector will become one of my best mobile presentation tool. Since using the VGADock you will not encounter that stupid Apple “I” product problem. “Wysiwyg”, great, powerpoint presentation, Netflix, Hulu, anything you can think of will project perfectly.
All in all, this is one of my best purchase of the year. Thanks Woot! If you want me to rate this Pico projector, I will give it a 5+ rating. So, enjoy your projector and hope this review help!
Yeah the cable is crap. Its under warranty though and I got it taken care of via their live chat option on their website. Pretty helpful resource. Tony (their employee) gave me some suggestions and when it still didn’t work he shipped me a new cable for free. The tracking number said it should arrive tomorrow. I will report then if it works
That surprises me because I got a new one for only $17.99 + $2.99 s/h from Amazon.com ONE DAY AFTER the Woot. I simply went to the item’s page, and then went to the New/Used link. When I saw the $17.99 price, I assumed that it was already sold but Amazon hadn’t removed the posting. My doubts were gone when it arrived at my home 4 days later, and it looks great. I was so impressed with the speedy delivery that I posted a glowing review of the seller.
[QUOTE=TheQuicksilver, post:247, topic:327019]
Got ahold of mine today and played with it on my iPhone. I love the fact that being laser light, it drives my wife’s dog crazy.
Anyway, the only problem I have is not anticipating that it wouldn’t readily connect to my laptop. Yes, I screwed up and didn’t pay attention to the VGA cable not being included. And the fact that the VGA dock costs a full HALF of what the projector itself cost drives me up the wall. Is there no way us geek folks can solve this problem with some creative adaptoring or something.
Hell, if someone can find the pinouts on the connector and source them from a supplier, we could MAKE a VGA cable with little effort. The dock can’t possibly be doing anything special to the video signal (it’s not even powered). Let’s problem solve this, people!
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If your VGA card supports SVHS output through the VGA port, you merely need to buy a $2 cord that rewires the VGA output to SVHS input.
My Pico did not work with touch v.2. Worked with my canon camera video.
Contacted micro customer service. Timely response, they suggested “reboot” of touch, reverse connect-touch then micro. It works! YouTube and music videos work great. Netflix not, no video out for v.2.
Happy with micro follow-up Fun product with much potential.
Got mine today!
Yes it does have laser speckling, but it isn’t terribly hard to watch. It worked right away with my second gen iPod Touch. You do need to jailbreak it first to get all video sources to work. Using the free TV out app, I was able to mirror the display with no difficulty and maintain control of the iPod screen. Unless you get one of the fancier paid apps that adjust the output resolution, setting the pico projector to 4:3 aspect is recommended otherwise you will stretch the image. One minor issue I noted is my iPod would not charge while plugged into the projector. Since I get much more battery life out of it that the projector would, and even if I did run the projector on AC, it would not be a huge issue as I doubt I will watch videos more than 2-3 hours at a time. This is well worth the $100 it sold for.
After a week of playing:
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General quality: Image is excellent in low light. I strongly recommend showing it on a surface that has little to no ambient light reflecting off of it. At a standard viewing distance of 8 feet, the image quality seemed to be limited to about a 60" diagonal image. Results will vary by reflected surface quality. Showing on a high gain theater screen in a controlled environment produced a quality image up to 95".
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Apple i devices: Tested with an iPhone 4, iPad 2, and a 1st gen iTouch. Works with all the iTunes apps that the web site says it will. I was particularly impressed with the Netflix and youtube apps. Keep in mind, this unit will not project everything from your i device. It will only show what your i device will send to a TV output. To do “mirroring” you’ll have to jailbreak your device…
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Composite devices: played a dvd, blu-ray, and my xbox 360 to acceptable levels. Obviously not in HD, but sufficient for most game experiences. Framerates were a little shaky while gaming. But only during intense scenes. (Multiplayer Call of Duty while getting fragged to hell)
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VGA devices: performance similar to others. A note on text, Reading text was an issue. At 60" diagonal, I found 26 point Calibri to be the legible threshold. Keep this in mind when making presentations.
I have a laptop that does not have the SVHS option so I picked up one of these converters off ebay for fifteen bucks. Don’t know if it will work better or worse then the VGA dock from microvision, but at less then half the price it’s worth a go.