It's a good thing that most inventors don't fall for the "something vaguely like this has been tried with inferior technology before, and it sucked" line of reasoning, or our world would look very different :)
Who iterate and hone until they have something worth existing in today’s world—often doing do more publicly than corporations’ R&D departments—then let the patent technicalities be the well-paid lawyers’ problem…
Nothing truly new under the sun
That said, this project isn’t well summarized as merely “tiny projectors”. Many patents have been granted for systems that include parts that are also patented. Indeed, I can see recently granted patents that include digital projectors. And many products have good sales without being patented; patents are not the end-all of invention. So I feel like you’ve been much too quick to dismiss.