A Sony Watchman Lives Again as the Display for a Dinky Raspberry Pi 3 Cyberdeck
A CRT might not seem like the obvious choice for a pocket-friendly display, but Sony had the technology down pat in the 1980s.
Pseudonymous maker "Granitsky" has built a compact, portable cyberdeck with a cathode-ray tube display (CRT) — traditionally bulky devices, but not when you're reusing one from a Sony Watchman portable TV.
"Behold, my cyberdeck with Sony Watchman from 1985 with a composite input and Raspberry Pi 3B+ and wireless keyboard/mousepad," Granitsky writes of the build, which features a custom-painted wireless keyboard and trackpad combination and a somewhat blurry display that will be immediately familiar to anyone who was interested in technology in the mid-1980s.
First released in 1982 in Japan, reaching the west two years later, the original Sony Watchman FD-210 was a pocketable two-inch black-and-white CRT display with integrated analog TV tuner — attempting to do for the TV crowd what the Walkman did for those who wanted music on the go. Over the years Sony launched a range of Watchman models, including ones designed to be worn as a watch; most are now gathering dust after most countries shut off their analog TV broadcasts.
The gadgets don't have to be fed a broadcast TV signal, though: in Granitsky's build the video and audio feed comes from a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ — made, pleasingly, in a modern Sony factory — mounted next to the Sony Watchman itself. Both are hidden under a custom-painted keyboard, gamepad, and touchpad combo serving as the machine's input, while a lipstick-style USB battery mounted at the top provides power to the Raspberry Pi — the Watchman running from AA batteries.
More information on the build is available in Granitsky's Reddit post.