Ok. I am cheap. But in this economy that is becoming fashionable.

I wanted an ELMO to project my text books onto the screen so I could keep the students attention and I would not need as much paper for the old ditto machine.

But the ELMO costs around $500 just for the machine. Then if you do not have the projector, that will cost you $1000+!

I am cheap.

Often I temper that with the word Frugal. (Sounds better.)

 
That ELMO is just a camera pointing downward at the book or whatever you want to show. All I needed was a camera. A webcam seemed perfect. Logitech makes a lot of cameras, and I found one on sale at a local electronics store.

Then the trick was to find a way to point that baby downward. My wife suggested copper pipe. But I was stuck on PVC. Comparing them at the OSH made me think the esthetics was right with copper. I bought three feet of flexible copper tubing 1/2 inch OD (outside diameter).

It fit into an oarlock I had made of oak. Therefore I had a base and a neck. A $2 clamp attached the whole thing to the rolling cart that I modified to be my computer table.
I cut another chunk of oak, drilled a 1/2 inch hole through it for the head where I attached the camera. A big rubber band (think celery stalks) around the head works just fine to hold the camera pointing anyway I want it to point.

The whole set cost; $42.80 (camera), $6 (3 feet tubing), $2 (clamp). The oak was a piece I had laying around.

$50.80 is pretty good.

I already had a projector given to me through an IT grant. I also use a slow old tired DELL laptop.

The last thing is to load the camera's software. Once I did I restarted the computer. Then I clicked on "my computer" on my PCs (yes, I have it on two machines, just in case). The bottom of the menu shows a camera devise. I clicked on it and up popped a page with the camera picture in the center and a choice to "take a picture" and something else. I seem to be single-minded at times.

The projector popped up the picture and filled the screen.

 

[Another option/componant was freeware called "Yawcam". It gives a full screen shot of the book your camera is pointed toward. I use the projector's menue to lighten/darken the image. But the software option above is much clearer.]

Here is a shot of the whole set-up. SUPER SIMPLE! and cheap!

With a Mac it is simpler. No need for the PC only software. Just click iChat and away you go! (I prefer to use Bonix TV software. It is top-notch.)

As I play around with this set-up and make new changes I will post them here.

OK. One week and now I can give an opinion of how CheapELMO works.

I find that the crispness of the lettering is poor. It is difficult to view a books page. I have had to tweak the lightness and contrast of the projector to help make images worth using. The apparatuses is fine but the camera is poor, even tho I am using a good camera. It is slightly better than an $8 camera from Ross. The images are not the quality I want.

Is it worth it? Some times when I shine it on the white-board and kids write on the board on the image, it makes interactions fun. But I find better image quality useing my scanner to make my images and save them to the computer and THEN use the projector for a great, crisp image that is easy to read and follow. Mostly I fine it not worth the time to make.

Buying a commercial ELMO is better. Even that seems to be fad technology that can be duplicated with a scanner and creative use.

So... Skip it if you don't absolutely need an ELMOish tool.