Semi Transparent Monitor
I took a cue from my friend Jon Cable with his homemade projector and from Jeff Powers and his (presumably photoshopped) transparent monitor and took apart my own to see if this was even possible.
Sure enough, the 17″ ViewSonic LCD monitor came apart into several pieces with the help of a few screw drivers and fingers to pull tape off. The LCD part is completely separate from the florescent backlighting. So, take the backlighting away and bend the LCD away from the metal backing and you have a semi-transparent monitor. Now, the only problem is lighting. So, to start, I hung the circuit boards and LCD panel in front of my window. The sun provides enough light to actually see the thing, but at night, things are going to be different. So, I put some white printer paper on the window and put a light in between the paper and the LCD panel. It doesn’t work so well in the day. I’m waiting for the night to come to see it in action.
My next step may be to suspend it over my desk and shine a light on the wall behind it. That would rock!
UPDATE: So, the whole light on the window thing didn’t work as well as I had hoped… so I moved the contraption into my room. I proped it up with a couple of old textbooks with paper on the desk and a light coming from the back. It works better than in the living room, but it still needs some improvement.
It’s pretty sweet to put stuff behind it on my desk because the object look like holograms in the screen.