CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

So one of my mod's customers requested an ACON camera. I said sure why not just give me a few bucks to conver install and testing it. It's been a LONG time since I've fiddled with ACON but man is it buggy.
I have 2 and chose the "newer" one with a 1998 driver board and 1997 camera. It had been awhile since I meesed around with ACON so had to re-learn the system quircks. First off ACON is not a prefectly functioning system. I mean it converges fairly well but the camera is very sensitive and gets confused easily. Most or all of this is discussed in Electrhome literature which I didn't feel inclined to look for it and probably also why VDC released ACON-2 (which I've never seen). bugs-

1) requires a completely dark room with no stray light. The ACON will project little sqaures on the screen in different colors so any stray light will cause it to error out with "low signal strenght".

2) the camera initially needs to be manually pointed and held at the screen, once it's see's the first "box" you let go and the stepper motors take. They move the camera around with cool clicking and whirring noises.

3) the camera first needs to "learn the the screen". There's an auto learn screen but the manual one is less hassle. Basically you define the screen borders. I think it saves the learn-screen info.

4) the camera can also be confused by light color objects. I had a white T-shirt tossed down in front of the PJ and slightly below the lenses and I would get an "ACON failed, too many data points". Once I removed the shirt it worked fine. So I suspect if you have a white floor or white ceiling. (Hopefully you don't as it really kills Contrast ratio perfromance) you might have issues? For a white floor a small dark throw rug would be fine just in the case the glare from the floor confuses it.

So eventually it did work but it does take a little while to ACON an image, especially if you choose "ACON Full". Which I believe also straightens out the green grid. The other 2 options of " ACON quick touch-up" and "Center only" are faster.
My question is how much of these bugs were fixed with ACON-2? Has anyone ever seen or used ACON-2,or it a super rare VDC option? Is it all new stuff or just tweaks on the original hardware?

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:05 pm Post subject:

There was a long thread about this (original ACON) on avs. One of the big things as well is... dust on the camera elements. Apparently one guy took a few dead cameras and completely resurrected them to 100% functionality by cleaning the (plastic) optics).

From what I know, the ACON was designed to be used via floor mount. THe spring loading of the servo motors is all wrong when you ceiling mount. That post also discussed retensioning the springs if ceiling mounting.

I usually grab the camera (against my original better judgment!) and manuallly point it at the screen when starting. That seems to get the camera to recognize the on screen lines, and away it goes.

I've never even heard of an ACON 2....

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

hmmm, found this which talks about Acon II but it looks like original E-home literature, not VDC

http://www.hometheater1.com/pdf/Electrohome/marquee_Spec%20Sheet.pdf

Also a troubleshooting PDF but not much help there. Disassembling and cleaning thwe camera sounds like a good idea until you relaize it's glued together and involves dismounting the PCB on the back.