Convert an Old Portable TV Into a Wall-Mounted Information Center

Old school portable CRT televisions are practically useless at this point—your smartphone can do far more and provide a much better picture. But, at one point, they were fairly popular, and it’s not surprising that you can easily find them at garage sales or thrift stores for just a few dollars. The question is why you’d even spend a couple of dollars on a piece of obsolete technology.

If you’re like Martin Mander (aka MisterM), the answer is because they can provide a cool retro enclosure for your projects. We’ve featured a couple of Mander’s other builds here, and vintage electronics are definitely a running theme for him. For this project, he started with a portable Hitachi I-89–311 TV from 1975.

The first step, as usual, was to gut the original electronics. Because we’re talking about a CRT screen, that left a lot of room inside the bulky enclosure, so Mander cut the case itself practically in half to slim it down. Then a Raspberry Pi 3 and an 8" Pimoroni screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio were added.

To display useful information, Mander set up the Pi with Chromium, and made each tab a sort of dashboard for different information. But twisting the TV’s original tuning knob, the user can switch between those tabs. The volume buttons provide scrolling functionality, while the on/off button refreshes the page. Finally, he added a PIR motion sensor, so the wall-mounted information center will automatically turn on when someone walks up to it.