What do you get when you take two cheap-o LCD key chain picture frames and add it to an classic kids 3D picture disc viewer? You get something magical… No, not really but you do get a hand held 3D image viewer that you can load up with your favorite stereo pairs.
The toy of youth everywhere, the View-Master (wikipedia) is known for letting the world come to life via 3D photographs on little paper ‘reels’. Each reel would contain seven slide stereo pairs that were taken to give the illusion of stereo depth. Seven images are great but why stop there? With the advent of cheap LCD displays available in places like the checkout lane of convenience stores it’s easy to make the logical leap to merge the tow together. That’s exactly what this enterprising guy did. He wired the buttons of the frame together to allow simultaneous image advancement and did a few other things to the internals of the View-Master. Pretty clever if you ask me. I think I may build one myself, I have quite a few 3D images and wouldn’t mind having an easy way to view them. My only concern is that the resolution on the 1.5 inch Coby key chain frames can’t be that high and when magnified the pixelation is going to be distracting. Still, it might be good for images that don’t have much fine detail.
[via Hack-a-day]
“The device has been modified” | Hacker Consortium
The official View-Master website
Like to have an analog View-Master of your very own? Go visit my Amazon store and pick one up for you and your family. While you’re at it, grab some Coby 1.5-Inch Digital TFT LCD Photo Keychains and have a go at it yourself.