Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

DIY Privacy Display - Recycle your monitors in a badass way

2015-11-25
so there's this really cool kind of trick effect that you can do with an LCD or LED monitor where you remove the polarizing filter and then mount a polarizing filter into a pair of glasses very easy to do with some 3d glasses that results in a monitor that looks like it just emits white and nothing else but if you're wearing the right glasses you actually see what's on screen let's check it out ozone gaming strike battle keyboard is a 10 keyless compact keyboard with multiple Cherry MX switch variants as well as 30 macro keys with five profiles check out the link in the video description to learn more so this isn't an original Linus tech tips idea this was posted by two different people about two years ago on YouTube it was posted by BrussPup and on Instructables it was posted by de movi and there's also two different methods of doing this they both start with taking off the bezel of the monitor and then using a knife to cut a perimeter around the screen it's very sketchy but oh well and then by chiseling off the polarizing filter getting rid of the glue somehow with a solvent of some sort and then mounting a polarizing filter in a pair of glasses sounds pretty straightforward so far the differentiating part is whether or not you buy some polarizing filters or reuse the polarizing filter off of your screen buying them sounds like more of a sure shot so I made sure that I had some before we started this but we're going to see which one works best and we're going to go through the whole process on camera okay so first things first I need to clear this area I need to get my eye fix it kit ready and my screwdriver because I have to tear the bezel off of this guy I'm going to remove the stand one interesting tidbit I've already kind of done this I used a different monitor and it's super didn't work and you might be wondering why I would release this video if it like super failed once already the problem there was there was a pre-existing crack on the monitor so when I'm trying to pull off the polarizing filter this glue under there the pre-existing crack spreads and I just ripped the whole thing in half so hopefully it doesn't happen again and if not we'll probably be good removing bezels on monitors kind of super sucks I'm going to do something that's not super visually appealing and use just a flathead to pry it off realistically you're supposed to use a spudger but I just bent the whole head off of one of mine because it wasn't really working properly the problem with this guy and the reason why it's going to be pretty ugly is it's metal and it doesn't give it all might be night if you have something plastic so we can give a little bit I might end up messing up some of the plastic here so what I'm going to do is start on the bottom that way it's hopefully going to be the least viewed part of the monitor and see look at this my proper prying tools don't really seem to be surviving I just torqued the whole end off of that one so rip I guess I'll go back to using my probably not going to be as pretty but screwdriver trick I ended up starting on the top because the bottom was giving me too much troubles you can see the starting point is pretty rough actually that's why I suggest maybe taking a little bit more time with it using a more proper tool and then from there on it's not too bad they'll just see little bumps here in there from the flathead but it's not really the end of the world I know people will care and it will bug me so whatever okay bezel is hopefully off what is going on down here oh dear hey some cables go to the buttons I was kind of hoping that these were just going to be button plates and the actual button was going to be under them and not on the bezel that is not true as you can see the whole mechanism is in here and then it goes through a wire into the thing so I'm not actually gonna be able to get this out which super sucks oh no yeah I'm not gonna really get it out so I'm gonna have to get a support for it and then I'll be able to work around it one little tidbit that I recommend I learned from the last monitor that your initial perimeter cut is actually pretty important I would recommend a sturdier hopefully bit sharper knife for the actual perimeter because you want a nice clean cut if that part makes it in the video everyone's going to spear me for cutting towards myself so right now I'm just trying to connect the corners so I cut for perimeter lines but they don't necessarily completely match up so I'm just trying to bridge them okay so our perimeter lines have been cut we're mostly done with the nice big knife now what we need to do is try to get under those lines that we cut and start actually pulling up the polarizing filter now remember there is glue under this entire thing so while you can pull it up sometimes you do really need to chisel under there and separate the polarizing filter from the actual panel so the reason why you want a nice clean cut with probably a nicer knife around the perimeter is once you kind of get started with your chisel as you go along the side where you cut should just kind of clump oh that bird shouldn't go in the video that's bad I was just commenting about how I shouldn't be cutting towards myself so the reason why you want a nice clean cut with your probably sharper knife around the perimeter is so that when you're moving along with the chisel the perimeter actually comes up so as you can see here I'm pushing in and then sliding out angling a little bit pushing in again and just moving along and the perimeter should just kind of come up with my knife which is actually quite helpful so that it keeps a clean edge when you enter the first time with your chisel it's probably going to be a little bit messy but once you start going everything does get easier another helpful trick is to not necessarily pull the polarizing filter all the time and time to kind of rip it off but hold it up so you get your chisel under there more easily once you have some room like I do now it's much easier to do this at the beginning obviously that's not really going to work so I've got this whole side off and I've got a bit of the top and a bit of the bottom off it starts to go a lot faster now I will note this might not be the experience with every monitor I do believe the amount of glue used on each monitor is definitely different but with this one it is going quite a bit faster another thing that's helping me is the clean sharp cut that I got all the way around the monitor which will feel super sketchy while you're doing it but is actually totally fine so don't worry about it so up here it started to break a few times yeah I don't really know what's going on with that probably something's wrong with the cut I do notice there's some strand of something here so what I might do is grab the knife that I originally did the perimeter with and kind of rerun this area a little bit just to make sure that it's actually okay so this top bit for me is pretty rough I keep getting cracks constantly going down from the top but my bottom line is super clean so hopefully I'll have a lot of usable filter and kind of this area and I'll just have to ignore the top left I guess almost let go come on there we go okay so there's our polarizing filter we've got kind of an ugly entry here where I started and then some big cuts up here which are pretty unfortunate but I have a lot of usable space to cut out lenses to replace on here or there the other method which I'm also going to do which is where we have purchased polarizing filters for like I don't know not that much off of Amazon and we'll try each method see which one's better so just a note is that this stuff on the screen isn't actually slashes or cuts into the screen this is all just glue residue so I need to clean it up somehow hopefully I can use isopropyl alcohol because that's all I really have on hand but I know people have been using goo begone so we'll see what has happened there hey do we have goo be gone do we have goo be gone but I have been using a shirt because the paper towel was leaving a whole bunch of crap behind and I wouldn't recommend that if you actually ever want to wear the shirt again so just a note Wow okay so yeah using a proper thing that is designed for removing glue probably a good idea this is so much easier so one thing I would recommend is making sure that you let your whatever goo removal stuff you use to sit for probably a while and then kind of pad it off and take it off nicely and then do it again and let it sit and do it again and let it sit and just keep on doing that to the point where you can fairly easily just wipe the glue off I as you guys saw use the chisel blade which was recommended on a few guides online saying that the blade definitely wouldn't scratch the monitor but there are lines going along the monitor that you can see from just the edge of the knife so a little bit just point in that and yeah try to make sure that your solvent solution does more of the work than you do and I think we'll be fine we're going to call it quits there in terms of trying to touch up the panel I'm going to try to get this monitor back together I knew those wires were going to be a problem all right one thing again to take note of is you can do this with pretty much whatever panel you want but I recommend going my route and buying some kind of cheap panel off some dude who's moving on Craigslist because it's not a perfect method but we'll talk about that more later now what we need to do is plug this guy in make sure it's all white which I'm sure it will be and then check out the alignment for these filters so I can cut them into some glasses can you even see that right you want to plug the lan show computer okay so it works a kind of frustrating thing happened while we were going though nothing went wrong with the actual removal of the polarizing filter or anything but it seems like the inverter on the monitor has ripp died at some point in time so if I shove this guy on here and change the source you'll see it works but then goes away almost immediately so we're going to go through the rest of it I'm going to make some glasses I'm going to test some things but pretty disappointed at the monitor died so I'm going to have to kind of rotate trying to turn this thing on and then try to figure out what orientation these things need to go before I cut them oh that's really close yeah yeah that's good so now I know from does not letting go of it that this part needs to be going up use my lens that I popped out of my glasses earlier squish that kind of against the polarizing filter and I'm going to use a thin sharpie to outline it and then I'm just going to cut on the inside of the outline and then it should work okay so I've cut my filter now it's time to actually fit it into my pair of glasses I think that works so far feel like a hipster not having one of my lenses there but now I just need to fit one more of them and I think we'll be good all right so my glasses are set up and ready to go let's see if they actually work there we go all right so the glasses do work sorry that the inverter is worked so you can't really see it all that well but something I'm going to do is actually pass these to Brandon and then hold those over the lens I'm going to do this live and then I'm going to change the source and hopefully you guys will be able to see it better with that over the lens give me a moment I'm going to have no idea when this works because I'm not actually gonna be able to see it that good okay there we go so the project worked the monitor didn't but the inverter dying had nothing to do with what we did for the project so poor old like 10-year old flat Ron is is gonna have to be retired and recycled after this but oh well I would still recommend getting an old monitor I just wouldn't necessarily recommend getting a very old monitor or one that you don't trust I bought this one off Craigslist's for 30 bucks or something and I only tested it for about two minutes two weeks ago and now fast forward two weeks the inverters dead things are bad another little bit that I have to say is while being able to remove the polarizing filter that was on the monitor and using it again is cool you also need to remove the anti glare filter off of here and while it's possible by soaking it in hot water and then trying to peel it off like a sticker and stuff it's really annoying and the polarizing filters from Amazon are super cheap and work really well one thing to note on here is that they also have a film on it a sticker like substance which is just supposed to protect them but it's super easy to take off so not nearly the same problem that we have with the anti glare filter another thing is the goof off or goobie gun or whatever the heck paint thinner you end up using to remove your glue let it sit on there for a while dry it off let it sit again dry it off let it sit again do that a few times so that you don't have to scrape the glue off it should come off much more evenly and you'll have a better time I probably should have done that but honestly it wasn't that hard it was scat she it feels very weird bringing a knife to a monitor screen it doesn't feel natural but yeah if you guys do it please post it on the forum I'd like to see your projects Mack welding gear ranging from underwear to undershirts t-shirts socks sweats and they're really easy to order and honestly they're really easy to wear too I mean they're boxers are literally cradling my man parts as we speak and I do a great job of it something that's pretty great is that their products are naturally antimicrobial but especially the pima cotton with silver xt2 ones so I swear to my girlfriend if you're watching this these were cleaned before I put them on but you in the audience should run an experiment where you get the silver ones and see how long you can wear them until they you know like actually smell for science anyways by the way if you hit up the Mac Weldon comm website and use the promo code Linus you get 20% off so I don't know check it out thanks for watching guys if you disliked the video cuz you're like wow the project didn't really fully work because the inverter died be sure to press the dislike button if you liked the project because it kind of sort of worked at the same time press the like button get subscribe favorite share all that fun stuff go on Amazon use our amazon affiliate code by some of our shirts and the link of the video description down below or become a contributor on the forum you want to see other crazy projects there's the conclusion to my fallout build which definitely falls under the category of crazy project so click up here to watch that
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.