So started this morning with breakfast and coffee. Read the paper. Then started on the next project, which was to get that whacking great screen on the wall. First propped it up on a couple of chairs and checked out the wiring, all good in that department. So now to mount the brackets. Got the laser level out and marked them. Then started drilling. Got through the plaster board, then hit a bit of a problem. A solid steel beam. There was no way my masonry drill was going to get through that. So had to go with ‘Plan B’. Dug out a shit load of wall. Basically I had to removed 240mm of plaster board and wall. Then insert a wooden batten. Attach this to the brick work and then the brackets to the wood. It was a pain in the ass, but as pain in the asses go, it was fairly straightforward. Put the brackets on and levelled it all up. Mounted the damn thing. Then walked Sasha and walked to Cribbs Causeway. Bought some diet rice and noodles. Walked back. Tidied up and did the wiring.

Now this is pretty cool. The projector does not have a 12 volt trigger output. But it does have a USB input. USB has a 5V output. Thankfully the USB port only goes live when then projector is on and not in ‘stand-by’. So I’ve built a small interface that takes the 5V from the USB, goes via an opto-coupler and then takes an old ‘wall-wart’ PSU which outputs around 9V and then jam that into the screen trigger relay. Net result is when you turn the projector on the screen goes down. When you turn it off it goes back up again. Sorted. Now if only I could work out how to set the drop height.

Tidied up. Then Jamie took me to the Indian. Had a nice meal. Drank lots of lager.