Driving simulator & Tips and tools Andrew Kun on 10 Jul 2008 11:15 am
Changing driving simulator projectors lamps
The Project54 driving simulator has three NEC WT610 projectors. A couple of days ago Zeljko Medenica checked the status of the projector lamps and found that they had very little useful life left (you can get an estimate of remaining lamp time from the projector). As a lamp reaches the end of its useful life it outputs less light, so the simulation looks dimmer. Also, apparently if you keep the lamp running past its useful life, it may actually shatter inside the projector.
We ordered replacement lamps (we purchased WT61LPE lamps, WT61LP will work too), and installed them yesterday. New lamps are easy to install, assuming you can reach the projector. In our case we had to rely on Oszkar Palinko’s height and balancing capability. A total of four nine screws have to be removed and the old lamp, which has its own casing, slides out of the projector. The new lamp, again in its own casing, can then be slid into the projector.
We visually compared the old and new lamps and could clearly see the difference between the two. In the picture below the lamp on the left is the new one and you can see that it is clear as opposed to the one of the right which became cloudy with use.
Finally, we had to reset the remaining lamp time on each of the projectors - I guess this is just an estimate based on the time the projector was on for.
Andrew Kun
on 10 Jul 2008 at 4:15 pm 1.Nathan Purmort said …
Is there any noticeable change in performance with the new lamps? A before and after shot showing relative brightness would’ve been neat to see.
on 10 Jul 2008 at 9:22 pm 2.Andrew Kun said …
The change is noticeable. And you’re right, it would have been good to take before and after pictures of the screens, but by the time we thought of this we’d already changed all three lamps. Oops.
on 11 Jul 2008 at 11:21 pm 3.oszkar said …
Nate, I have to admit it’s my fault that we don’t have before and after (detergent-comparison-type) images. I had to replace the lamps quickly because I had some other, job-related but non-height-related obligations at that time (I had to order some parts). So until Professor Kun and Jon were taking the second image in the post, I replaced the lamps in a haste. I was not even thinking what a comparison opportunity I was making impossible.
I would also like to correct, that there were actually 3 screws per projector, 3×3=9 all together. I just wanted to make sure, that I get all the credit for the 5 extra screws that were not mentioned in the post.
This article could start a new breed of posts on eceblogger. Zeljko, do you have those images from your memory-swapping-spree that you performed these days on almost every computer at Project54? This might be a good time to post them.