YouTube “Television” Box

According to Exposed Wire, watching YouTube is his biggest time sink and main source of entertainment. While most of us are content to watch the 'Tube on computer screens, phones, and other standard smart devices, Exposed Wire wanted a custom appliance that would make it easier to consume his favorite creators’ newest content. What he came up with is a Raspberry Pi-powered project in the form of an old-school television, with six simple buttons to change the YT channel.

The unit displays videos on a 7” LCD screen arranged on the front of this “TV box.” When the appropriate channel button is pressed on the panel next to the LCD, it automatically pops up the appropriate page and starts playing the selected creator’s newest video.

Beside each button is an icon for the channel, as well as an LED that lights up to show that a particular creator has a new video out. The Pi controller uses the YouTube API to compare each channel's "all uploads" playlist to a previously stored value. If the number of videos increases, it's able to infer that new content is available and activate the LED.

The build process is outlined in the video below, along with a short demo of it in action. More info is found in Exposed Wire's write-up, including the needed code to run the setup. Exposedwire notes that YT API changes could break things in the future, but likely such a scenario would be easy to fix. Also notable here is that it uses a Pi 4, after the initial Pi 2 version proved insufficient for streaming purposes!