Room Lighting

Ideally, picture the room in two halves. The projection screen half downrange and the firing line half back where you stand while shooting on the system. Downrange at the screen you do not want any harsh direct light such as canned lights or direct overhead lights shining on the screen. Up range, at the firing line, you can have pretty much normal room light


Room lighting factors:


Sunlight

Zero sunlight! This can not be stressed enough. If you turn off all man-made lighting in the room including the projector and you can still see then there is enough sunlight to affect the calibration and tracking. Sunlight is the worst enemy for the camera. The sunlight is far brighter than any light in a room and even a small amount can wash out the camera image and render it unable to either calibrate or track the laser. You will need to cover any windows so that all sunlight is blocked from coming in the room.


Direct Light in Camera View

The other big lighting issue is a direct light source in the view of the camera. This could be a lamp, a window, a ceiling light behind the screen, an LED on a VCR, anything other than the projector that can be seen in the camera's view. Also watch for IR security cameras. This is something I came across recently. The customer kept telling me there was not a light source but we could see a really bright light in the camera feed. It ended up being a security camera that had IR LEDs that came on when they turned off the room lights to set up the system.


Light Falling on the Screen

The last lighting element to watch for is a bright light that is shining directly on the screen. Such as ceiling can lights, track lights or sunlight from a window. This can either wash out the entire image or just a portion.


Bright Projector too close to the screen

If the projector is too close the the screen and is projecting a small image, usually under 5 ft in width, this can cause the image to be too bright for the camera. The close the projector is to the screen the smaller the image will be and the brighter the image will become. This is especially true with bright projectors over 3000 lumens.


Lower lumen projector on a really large screen

The opposite can also be true. If you are projecting a larger screen such as 12ft or wider a 2000 lumen projector will not be bright enough. You would need at least a 3000 lumen or brighter projecter in this case.