Mister Jalopy's drive-in theater-on-a-trike

By Mark Frauenfelder at 10:44 am Thursday, May 24

One of the highlights of Maker Faire was Mister Jalopy's Urban Guerilla Movie House. It's a scratch built video projector housed in a whimsical wood cabinet mounted atop an adult tricycle. The complete how-to will be featured in an upcoming issue of MAKE.

A Schwinn Town and Country adult tricycle with a Lumenlab-style projector on the back. Inside the wooden box is a stripped 15" PC LCD monitor and replacing the meager florescent backlight is an awesome 400w lamp that is bright like welding. Add a reflector, a couple of fresnels lens and a homemade focusing triplet lens and you are ready to bring the party to the people. Easy as that? Well, not really. I made more missteps than a fox trotter with two left feet. But, I learned a ton along the way and the results will be in Make Volume 11.

Under the roof, curious peekers will find a Mac laptop with a RocketFM transmitter for radio broadcasting the movie audio to the 80's era cassette boombox on the handle bars. Oh, it works like a champ! Does the projector work without AC power? No. It is already heavy like a battleship straining those original, cracked Schwinn tires and I can't imagine how many deep cycle marine batteries would be needed for a 400W lamp. While riding, I assure you, it is plenty satisfying to listen to the awesome cassette power boombox.

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