A while back a good friend of mine gave me a whole mess of old cassette camcorders. After testing them out and finding out that most of them didn't work, I began taking them apart. Aside from the numerous lenses I found, I also discovered an invaluable jewel inside the viewfinder of one. That jewel would happen to be the viewfinder itself, which was actually a CRT television! I was ecstatic.
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| Adorable! |
Before I could put the TV to use, I had to figure out the pinout. I turned the camcorder on and used my multimeter to probe for the power input. 5 volts, no problem! I used a composite signal to figure out the input, which would be apparent when the image is displayed. I soldered on a RCA connector for convenience, so any video signal can easily be plugged in.
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| You can see the RCA plug and 5V wires soldered on. |
Using the TV is a breeze. Simply plug the 5V wall wart into any outlet, and the TV powers on. Plug in a composite video signal and the TV instantly displays it. It's really that easy!
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| 5.1V is close enough. |
The TV is much smaller than it looks. Here's a picture showing how small the actual screen is:
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| About 1.5cm in diameter! |
The screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio and boasts a 480 by 360 resolution in 1.2 by 0.9 cm. To add to the archaism, it's in black and white! Astonishing!
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| All right! |
So what am I going to do with this TV? I have plans to build a wooden cabinet for it and model it after those really bulky televisions. Ideally it would be portable and have a small audio amplifier for watching TV on the go. That probably won't happen for a while though, since I've been incredibly busy lately. It definitely will be a fun project though!
Until next time,
Grant
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