Raspberry Pi Delivers News and Weather in Retro Style

Watch any Eighties tech-inspired film (we expect Struggle video games, aliens And Ferris Bueller’s time off) and inevitably there will probably be a scene with low-resolution textual content slowly scrolling on a burnt-out CRT display. This Project from SomePeopleCallMeJJ (Jeff Jetton) appears at numerous “magic mirrors” from a special angle. It makes use of an previous CCTV monitor and a Raspberry Pi to point out us the most recent information with the flip of the Eighties.

ne_magic_nor_a_mirror_retrostyle_newsfeed from r/raspberry_pi

RetroFeed mission makes use of a Raspberry Pi – undecided which mannequin, however given the scrolling textual content output, any mannequin can have the facility to do it. Even a Raspberry Pi Pico W can do the job with the proper equipment. The Pi is related to an previous CCTV monitor utilizing composite output that slowly scrolls a variety of reports and monetary headlines, climate information, and the situation of the Worldwide Area Station on the display. As a substitute of dumping every thing directly, the mission slowly writes the textual content that Jetton likens. Don Lancaster’s TV Typewritermakes use of random horizontal parking positions to cut back display burn-in. All the things is textual content based mostly and in tremendous low decision of 80×24 characters.

So the place does the info come from? Raspberry Pi collects information utilizing Python requests library the place every feed (information, finance, ISP, climate) has its personal module. These modules are imported by the primary newsfeed.py file, and with just a little parsing and formatting, the info is output to a pleasant old style CCTV display.