This project concept started as a Christmas gift for my brother. The idea was for a digital photo frame that would loop a video collection of old family tapes that my parents recorded when we were little. To give a retro look of childhood I picked an old portable TV to use as my enclosure for the project. A quick hunt on eBay found plenty of portable 80s TVs and knowing that I was going to be using a 5” HDMI display I picked a 4.5” TV that had thick enough bezels to account for some wiggle room error.
With the TV ordered I began planning what other parts I needed for the build. I knew I’d need something small yet powerful enough to run a video and output through HDMI so the Raspberry Pi 3 was selected. I wanted to make the TV 100% portable so an internal battery and power charger chip were included to power the Pi and display. Finally to complete the integration with the TV I hunted down a PowerBlock which adds a hardware power switch functionality to the Raspberry Pi. Luckily the TV’s built in power switch was a basic toggle so it could be seamlessly used to startup and shutdown the Pi.
Investigating the video playback options on the Pi I found Pi Presents, a toolkit created for museum use to display multimedia presentations with a wide array of features around user input and controlling external systems. I used a single core feature of it being able to, on Pi startup, loop through a video without any interruptions or user input. With correct configurations once the Pi received power it would startup (on a startup mode that displayed the minimal amount of scripts) and instantly start a video loop through a video I created.
Fitting all these pieces into the TV took some trial and error. After gutting out all the old electronics/CRT from the TV I trimmed the front faceplate to hold the wider 5” display snug against it, right angle HDMI connectors were used to allow for an easier fit.. The Raspberry Pi could not fit flat in any directions so I modeled and 3d printed a 45 degree mount that could hold the Pi on top of it and parts of the charging circuit fit below it. A second mount was designed and printed to hold the battery in place. The front power switch was integrated to startup the Pi and the existing power jack in the back of the TV was swapped out with a micro USB port to charge everything. Once a dry fit was verified everything was epoxied into place.
The most tedious part of this project was digitizing the old family VHS tapes, 27 in total. Playing the tapes in realtime on a VCR I hooked up their output to a video capture card and began the recording to my computer. One other clip was pulled off a Sony handicap using multiple converter boxes/cables. After editing the files down I had 25 clips of my brother in a four and a half minute short. A generic “test card” color pattern was added to the start of the video giving it a classic “over the air” presentation and with the typical hiccups of the VCR records no extra video filters were required.
