Proxima DP6150/Ask C100 - purple line right, yellow shift left?

My ancient but still functional Proxima DP6150 has started to show some problems which seem to be relatively common with this series. The left side of the image has what appear to be convergence or color shift problems, while the right side sports a somewhat noisy vertical purple bar. The purple bar is a recent addition (it appeared when my daughter had left the thing in standby mode for a few weeks), the color shift/misconvergence has been there from when I bought the thing for next to nothing a year ago.

This is what it looks like on the left side (and no, this is not the normal projection surface...):



And this is the purple bar on the right hand side:



And, for good measure, here is the entire projected image:



I know about the solder problems this model has. I have not opened it up yet as I have a few questions before I put the thing under the knife/screwdriver/soldering_iron. For one, there is the ever-elusive service menu. As I do not have the remote control which seems to be the key to enter that menu I have not been able to check whether this menu a) offers any convergence controls and b) whether those controls could be used to solve this problem.

Another problem is has from when I got it - which is possibly related - is that the keystone controls show some strange effects on the blue channel. This picture was taken with the keystone correction maximized in one direction:



This picture shows what it looks like when keystone correction is maximized in the other direction:



This shows the blue shadow which appears when keystone correction is used, as well as the fact that the purple bar is aligned to the LCD pixel grid, not to the projected image. Clearly some of the problems (eg. the blue shadow) lie in the video processing chain while others (the purple bar) are caused by a problem in the display engine. But wait, there is more! Have a look at this image:



This shows a yellow ghost image related to the projected 'P'. With maximum keystone correction the 'P' itself is not aligned to the pixel grid but the ghost DOES follow the pixel grid...

So my questions are:

1) as this seems to be a common problem, what is the usual solution (other than 'buy a new projector' or 'take it to a service center' or 'make sure you have it plugged in' or some similar 'FixYa' solution...)? Some of the effects - eg the noisy purple bar - could well be caused by the bad solder flow job which these projectors seem to be known for, but I'd like to have some more input from those of you who have serviced these projectors before I put the circuit board in the oven...
2) does the service menu offer anything worth my attention to solve this problem?
3) is it possible to enter the service menu without using a remote control?
4) does anyone know the remote control codes used for this projector? One of my phones can double as a universal remote control, so if I know the codes used I might be able to fool the projector into thinking I have a 'Batmouse III' remote control in my hands... There are some Proxima models in the list at a well-known remote control site but none for this model or its equivalents (Ask C100, Astrobeam X210, ...).

The service manual for this thing seems to be available online, but only behind some silly pay walls. Does anyone have a PDF handy which they could send me? I don't know if it contains anything worthwhile but is is always better to be with than without...

Thanks in advance,
Frank
Edited by Yetanfou - 11/18/12 at 4:01pm

Another thing which might be of use is a pointer to the IR coding used by the (no longer available) 'Batmouse III' or one of its siblings (eg Batmouse IV, which seems to control a similar family of projectors). I've been trying to cobble up a working set of codes using the information from Infocus but thus far the thing does not respond to any of my attempts to control it (using LIRC on a T23 notebook and Noviiremote on an HTC Prophet). I need to have remote control access to enable the service menu...

So if there is anyone who either knows a pointer to these codes (I have not found any at remotecentral.com) or who has a Batmouse III at home which s/he is willing to point at a PC with an IR receiver so the codes can be grabbed, please come forward. It is very frustrating to be blocked by something as simple as this... I'm not saying that access to the service menu *will* enable me to solve these problems, but it might well be part of the solution (next to some re-soldering and possibly re-flowing the ECA).

TIA//Frank

Thanks for the information, when I have time I'll take the thing apart to have a look at the (lack of) quality of the solder joints.

BTW, I have a firmware file for the 6155 named 'C105_DP6155_LP690_805280E.bin', is this an older version than the one you flashed to your 6155? You were looking for 'an older version of the firmware' back in April...

Did you ever get tot the service menu? If so, does it offer controls to correct the alignment which could help in my case? And possibly in yours? And do you have the remote control needed to get to the service menu? If so, you could do all of us Proxima/ASK/Infocus/Geha/Astro* users a favour by pointing the thing at an IRDA-equipped PC or a Philips Pronto and tell us the results. The remote control for this thing is no longer available, and the 'universal' substitutes don't seem to offer all the functions needed to get into the service menu...

Do you have access to either:

• an IrDA-equipped laptop running Linux
• an IrDA-equipped mobile phone running Android
• an IrDA-equipped mobile phone running Windows Mobile
• a Philips Pronto remote
• a Microsoft MCE remote
• A Logitech Harmony universal remote
• any other recording universal remote which can dump data to a PC

If so, recording ('learning') IR-codes from any existing remote control is easy - just run the relevant recording software and start pushing buttons. You can also use it to make 'backup copies' of your existing remote controls in case the dog/your younger sibling/child mistakes it for lunch/a plaything/a baseball bat/etc.

Re-flow does not solve this problem. Cleaning the LCD edge connectors doesn't solve it either. In reality the problem seems to lie somewhere in the video processing chain. As that chain is more or less completely digital it starts to look like a software/configuration problem. Another interesting observation can be made when the projector is configured for either upside-down or rear projection. When this is done the ghost image moves to the opposite side and change colour.

This image was taken with the projector configured for normal front projection:


This image was taken with the projector configured for ceiling-mounted projection:


Notice that the ghost image has moved to the right hand side and has changed colour to green but in general is a mirror image of the normal-side-up version (eg. look at the ghost of the letter 'e' before the 'Rear' menu option).

I currently have firmware release 1.30 on the projector. Given your less than stellar experiences with updating the firmware on the DP6155 I'll wait with updating mine until I have access to the service menu, just in case it decides to mess up image alignment after I update it. According to the usually useless FixYa site the service menu can be enabled by pressing (quote) "menu, then service, enters the following: Magnify Volume up, Volume down, Power, Menu, Source and enter". That does not make sense as there is no 'service' button on the remote, nor is there a 'service' entry directly in the menu. There is however a Service entry in the Advanced menu, so maybe that is what should be selected first? Not having a remote control I can not test this unfortunately... but you can.

OK, I now have the latest available firmware (1.31, filename C100v805262H.bin) on the projector. It runs as it did... misconvergence and all. That in itself is not surprising. What is surprising, and annoying, is the fact that this firmware version does not work with the Infocus ImageEnhancer program which claims to solve these convergence issues - for that you need a firmware file by the name of C100_DP6150_805262J. I have not yet been able to locate this file... and with that, the simple solution to my - and many others - problem with this projector can not be solved yet. I'm almost tempted to try to flash the firmware for the DP6155 (for which I do have the 'correct' version) but apart from that being a silly thing to do it probably won't work as the standard firmware upgrade process only seems to work within a given series (805262 or 805270 for DP6150, 805280 for DP6155, etc).

So what can I say? I'm contacting Infocus to see whether I can get hold of this firmware release there. Don't get your hopes up I'd say...

If anyone happens to have a copy of the required firmware for the Proxima DP6150/ASK C100, going by the name of C100_DP6150_805262J please speak up. I guess that firmware offers some extra RS232 configuration options to be able to get rid of the ghosting.

UPDATE:

Annoyed by all these artificial walls I decided to just flash the thing with the LP690/DP6155 firmware. After all, the 'only' difference between these models is the lamp, right?

Well, almost. The firmware actually is accepted by the projector. The projector runs, and projects an image - the purple bar is gone. The ImageEnhancer program works. It does make it possible to reduce the ghosting. The only problem is that with this firmware the projector thinks blue is a muddy brown... it seems the DP6155 (or at least something in the firmware) has swapped the red and blue channels compared to the DP6150.

Fortunately it is possible to go back to the DP6150 firmware as well, which projects blue as blue. The settings made with ImageEnhancer survive the firmware change, and mostly have the desired effect. Mostly, because the last part of the procedure - where you have to align a thin white line so that it just becomes visible on the left-hand side of the screen - has an undesired effect on the image in the older firmware in that it cuts off part of the projected image. If you happen to change this setting to get the line where it should be, you'll notice the projector does not use the right-most part of the LCD in the older firmware. To get back all the pixels you paid for you'll have to re-install the newer firmware, move that line back to where it was when you started the whole process and reflash the DP6150 firmware.

It would of course be much easier if the required ImageEnhancer-enabled firmware was available for the DP6150. If anyone has this file lying around, please speak up...

Or maybe I should just swap the mirrors and polarizers in the projector and call it a DP6155 with 'eco' lamp...
Edited by Yetanfou - 11/22/12 at 5:41pm