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German researchers unveil a euro cent-sized projector

You've already seen the slewofprojectorsthatwe at Engadget are wont to write about regularly. But what you probably haven't seen is this euro cent-sized projector created by crafty German engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena. The 16mm (0.6 inches) wide projector works by shooting a laser at a single vibrating mirror, and although it works with red and blue lasers, the scientists say that green diode lasers aren't yet small enough, preventing the projector from hitting a full range of colors -- so hold off on thinking you're going to be watching "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" from a thumb-drive sized device in the near future. Dr. Peter Schreiber of the Fraunhofer Institute told the BBC that such a device could be eventually embedded into cellphones or PDAs. We'd love to be able to project a movie from our phone, but sadly Dr. Schreiber didn't tell the Beeb how big the projected image is, how much it will or currently costs, nor when it might be available -- not even a rough estimate, like 2014. Why must you be so coy with us, Fraunhofer Institute?

[Thanks, Ndric]