Raspberry Pi Gives a 1960s Sony TV a New Lease on Life
Browse through vintage family photos on an old-school portable TV.
Old TVs may not have had large HD pictures, or even stereo sound in many cases, but they did have a certain style that advanced sets today don’t match. If you’d like to get a bit more use out of a retro TV set, here’s an interesting idea from creator “Democracity.”
This build converts a 1960s Sony tube TV into a digital picture frame, taking out the electronics inside to sub in a Raspberry Pi 4 and small TFT touchscreen. To imitate the original look of the display, a rounded bezel was cut out of 1/16” acrylic on a CNC machine, though it would be possible to do the same with cardstock in a pinch. The Sony TV shell used here provides a huge amount of space for the Pi, as well as any other accessories needed. Note this type of tube display can remain energized for some time after being powered, so caution is needed when taking one apart.
Once put back together and mounted with the help of foamcore, the Pi was then set up with DAKboard in order to show vintage photos sourced from a Google Drive folder. This enables it to be updated easily as a photo frame, but such a Pi-based system could be implemented for anything really. Perhaps one could even use it for video streaming, allowing the process to come full-circle!