I turned an old portable TV into a dedicated retro gaming system!

I found this super cool looking vintage TV in a dumpster on the side of the street, someone old was cleaning out their house. I couldn't let it go to waste, so I took it home and gave it a new life as a window into the past with everyone's favourite retro games. At its heart is a Raspberry Pi 3 running the great RetroPie image, it can emulate everything up to and including N64/PS1/Dreamcast, with a built-in wireless XBOX controller receiver for multiplayer parties! It also has a digital tuner inside to watch actual television , using the original knob for channel switching.
Here's a video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu4SaxqlHVo

It's easier to get a got shot of the body with the screen off

Here he is next to his big brother. I'm much worse at MK 64 now after getting used to MK8...

Nintendo 64 game list with video previews

Ocarina of Time running smoothly

Chrono Trigger - on my to-do list

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures before I started gutting the system. I actually thought it didn't work at all because I didn't know how to switch it on properly - turns out you need to PULL the power knob. The original CRT screen might have worked, and it would have been cool to use that, but it would have probably been difficult to get a video signal to it since the TV had no inputs at all, just the built-in TV antenna. So I took all the old stuff out and now it needs a new screen

eBay is the solution to all problems! I found this 12inch screen which takes a whole bunch of different inputs. Here im testing it out with my previous Raspberry Pi project: http://imgur.com/a/ShMDE

The screen manages to fit perfectly, after lots of cutting and griding

This is what it's like inside with everything cleaned out. You can see the holes I drilled in the front below the screen for the LCD buttons. There's the Raspberry Pi in a case to the right, and the digital tuner board to the left.

In order to make it look more authentic, I wanted to have a curved screen cover like the original CRT. I came up with the idea of moulding some clear acrylic/perspex sheet over the front of the old CRT screen to take on its curved shape. Getting this to work properly was probably the hardest part of the project. I heated the sheet up in an oven and also used a heat gun to get it malleable

After many attempts I finally got it an acceptable state. I still had to spend a lot of time grinding and sanding away the screen frame for it to fit nicely, as well as trim the acrylic

Here it is just about done. I almost cut and sanded it down too far and needed to put in those little bits of black plastic in the corners to fill gaps.

I thought it would be pretty cool if normal television still worked on the unit, and even have the original channel selection knob functional. So I bought a digital TV tuner/set top box, and wired up relays to the channel selection and power buttons on it so they can be triggered automatically by a micocontroller (arduino). Here you can see the 3 big black relays (with transistors to provide enough power to activate them) hooked up to the small tactile switches on the board.

There is also a wire coming from the status LED so the Arduino can tell whether the tuner is on or in standby

Here is the Arduino clone with tentacles reading the current state of the channel selection knob. The original channel selection worked with a complicated arrangement of 3 rotary encoders that altered the analogue signal coming from the antenna by switching circuits, filtering, changing resistance/inductance or whatever. I hacked it up a bit and found an arrangement that let me use 9 signals to uniquely identify each of the 13 knob positions. When a channel number changes, I can tell whether it was an increase or decrease, and send a button-press signal to the appropriate channel +/- button on the digital tuner.

Here's the new speaker (which I also found thrown out on a street somewhere) wired up to the audio amplifier. I probably would have just used the original speaker if I didn't come across this one, but it's much better quality. The original volume control knob is used to change volume of the amplifier

At the back of the TV we have the original power cord, with a USB port above. There is also a USB hub under the TV with 4 ports facing out the side (hard to see normally). Also note the sneaky Xbox controller received glued up behind those holes at the bottom (with the pair button accessible)

Just so happened to tune in at an iconic moment while testing the digital TV tuner using the TV's original antenna...

I later ran into TV signal signal/interference problems of some kind when having all the components in there and closed up. Not sure if it's interference from other components or what... I'll need to play around with it some more and hopefully get it working reliably

Here's what it looks like on the inside in just about its final state. On the bottom is the power supply which converts from mains AC to 12V/5A DC. The screen, TV tuner and amplifier all run directly from the 12V. There is a power distribution board with 2 step-down converters to 5V to power the Raspberry Pi, USB hub and Arduino.

The Raspberry Pi has a fan which automatically activates when the CPU gets hot. It is connected to the screen through HDMI and the TV tuner through composite video.

The new speaker housing was trimmed to fit in the space. I maintained the audio jack out the left side, to enable headphones or external sound system. Audio comes from the screen's headphone output, so automatically switches depending on the active input to the screen
Hot glue is everywhere

Here I am showing it off to family with some multiplayer Mario Kart. The cable coming out shows where the USB hub is hidden. The screen input and other settings can be set with the discreet buttons on the front.

The software setup & configuration is a whole other story, but not specific to this project. Check out the RetroPie community and wiki (http://retropie.org.uk/), it's super easy to get running

P.S: Spot the lizard

It has a handle! And is much lighter than it used to be

My collection of DIY retro gaming systems, for at home or on the move. Now I just need to find the time to use them...Thanks for reading!
Check out my handheld system build: http://imgur.com/a/ShMDE