Beam your photos to the big screen
by Volker Weber
If you have a Lumia and never tried PhotoBeamer, you really should. It's a service and an app that lets you display photos on a big screen. How does that work? You need a javascript-enabled browser on the big screen. The browser in my Samstung SmartTV is just fine. You go to photobeamer.com in that browser and the screen will show a QR code. On your Lumia, you load the application, point to a photo in your library and the app will start the camera to read the QR code from the screen. The next thing you see is that photo in the browser window on the big screen. From there, you can swipe back and forth on your phone, and the big screen follows.
How does that work? Your phone sends the picture to photobeamer.com where the browser picks it up from. Phone and browser don't need to be on the same network, they just need to be able to see the photobeamer.com reflector. Yes, you are uploading photos to an internet site, and yes, photobeamer.com has a privacy policy.
I have used this service on really big screens in conference venues, and it takes people a while to grasp how this magic happens. You just tell the presenter to call up the website and then take it from there using your phone. Of course you are not limited to photos. You can also export your PowerPoint slides as jpegs and run your presentation through PhotoBeamer. Put the browser in presentation mode, which removes all chrome and you are running your presentation from the palm of your hand without any connection to the presenting PC. Plus, you are not giving anybody your presentation file. Magic.
Comments
Klasse, danke für den Tipp
Surprisingly :-) PhotoBeamer has been pulled from the Apple app store after a well known finnish firm acquired it.
There is a copy-cat-app for iOS: www.QRprojector.com
I have just tried it and here comes my mini review:
Looks exactly the same at first: Start app, scan QR-Code, view picture.
There is some of the same magic to it, but the best stuff is missing:
- works only with both devices on same network (wifi, not mobile)
- no swiping from photo to photo (you have to tap each photo and therefore look at the phone all the time)
Still a cool app.
PS: I guess we all have to get a Lumia phone, connect our iPhones via USB, download the pictures and then project them using PhotoBeamer…
There is also a copycat app for Android.
I find this PhotoBeam app fits very well into the overall Lumia photography story. After all, you want to show these photos around. You can walk up to any screen at work, in a friends home and have a quick and easy setup. The beauty is that it works with any target. There is no login, no joining a network, or anything complicated.
For me it's a good plan b for presentations.
And when I don't want to send my pictures / presentations to the NSA, I just hook up my trusted BB Z10 to the next HDMI capable "big screen".
