Casio TV 880 with Pi Zero

The Casio TV 880 was a portable analogue television built in 1999. Designed for the now defunct analogue television network, it normally shows just a blank display.

Back in the day it was the height of portable entertainment. Boasting a 2.3-inch colour LCD display and powered by four AA batteries.

One of the more forward thinking features was the inclusion of an RCA S-Video input socket. "The brilliant thing about this little TV is that it works on the analog frequency that we used to broadcast in the UK and no longer do," says David Watts, the project's maker.

Turning a Casio TV 880 into a YouTube player

Under the the arial is a hole for AV so that's your composite video. David then sets about testing the Casio TV 880 with a Raspberry Pi Model A. This Raspberry Pi came with a composite video output socket. 

It takes some twiddling, but he manages to get the Raspberry Pi interface displayed on the screen. Then he takes apart the Casio TV 880 to see if there's anything else he can do.

It turns out that the 880 is just the right size for the Pi Zero. This is great because the Pi Zero also has RCA sockets (next to the GPIO). This enables the Pi Zero to be soldered directly to the AV of the old Casio 880.

The end result is going to be a handheld YouTube player. We think it's a fun project and hope David shares the end result with us soon.