A Raspberry Pi VCR Inside A VHS Cassette?

ah the once ubiquitous VHS cassette introduced in 1976 it became wildly popular in the 1980s and widely used through the early 2000s now I realize some younger viewers may not even know what this is so briefly before DVDs and video streaming people recorded and played back TV shows and movies on magnetic tape that you see inside this cassette you use something called a video cassette recorder or VCR to play or record the audio and video on these tapes the VCR would then be connected to a television set so you could view the contents of the tape well I thought that for the 48th birthday of the VHS cassette I would pop a few open see how they work and then try to cram an entire digital video recording and Playback system inside of one essentially a VCR inside of a cassette now you might be thinking that in 2024 uh that's pretty simple here you go video player inside of a cassette but no uh that's not what I was thinking about actually I was thinking about something a bit more DIY so here's what I came up with now of course it uses a Raspberry Pi inside because I use them in almost all of my projects in addition to that it has a video capture card inside to enable video recording now these unlabeled buttons on the front actually operate the device just like normal VCR transport controls you have fast forward play Rewind record stop and program in addition it uses these RCA jacks to enable video input and output so let's connect up a monitor and try this out hitting play we can see the 80 style alpha numeric LED display and the cassette reel spinning to remind us that this was a VHS cassette as we scan forward notice the onscreen display also evokes a 1980s aesthetic now let's connect an audio video input to the recorder in this case the camera aimed at myself as we enter record mode you can see the video as it's being recorded now let's play it right back also just like an 80s VCR it has an inscrutable timer system to program future recordings first you press the program button at which point all of the buttons assume a secondary function now you select your program the start hour and start minute [Music] then the ending hour and ending minute and then at this point most people just gave up or asked their kids to set the VCR to record something before we look at how I built this recorder let's take a quick look at a couple of neat features of the VHS cassette that you might not realize exist the delicate videotape inside is protected by this hinged cover on the front the VCR has a pin inside that hits this spot allowing the hinge to open exposing the tape so it can be played also note that the reels are normally locked so the tape does not unspool on its own another pin inside the VCR hits this spot which mechanically unlocks the reels and allows them to move freely here you can see a working mockup of the device with all the parts connected together at the heart is a Raspberry Pi 3A plus it has a USB capture card connected to digitize the video input you can also see the display push button controls and motor driver for the flat motor that was ripped from a CD player but how am I going to fit all of this inside of a video cassette first of course we need to take everything out including the tape then we need to remove all the ridges and pins from the inside I drilled holes for the buttons in the top of the cassette and then I mounted a small PCB with the buttons on the back now that we've destroyed yet another VHS tape let me me take a moment to say how strange this feels these blank tapes were $25 back around 1980 when my family first got a VCR that's $91 in today's money so ruining a tape by taking it apart was something you just didn't do the largest item is the video capture stick so we'll have to remove all of the unnecessary Parts the cover can be pried off and inside we see that the video connections are via this Molex Pico blade connector we can replace the thick connectors with our own tiny Pico blades for just the connections we need look how much bulky stuff we removed to save space next it's time to start laying out the parts to try to make them fit it's not as easy as it may seem keeping in mind the height and width restrict restrictions of the cassette and the locations of the buttons I tried numerous combinations to no [Music] avail until finally here's the layout that ultimately worked or so I thought the DuPont connectors on the pi GPO pins turned out to be too high so after replacing them with a slim ribbon connector everything finally fit together as with most of my projects the software is running in containers I have one for the audio routing and one with custom python code to respond to the button presses and control everything for the video software I'm using a headless version of VLC I'll post a link to the GitHub repo with more technical details for those who are interested for me the real test is whether the modified cassette still fits into a VCR now I'm not going to try inserting it into a modern frontloading VCR because that's just going to damage everything now we have to go back about 40 years to a device that will allow us to insert a cassette Without The Machine trying to load the tape inside for that we're going to use this thing let's try it out well it's a little tight and success I hope you enjoyed this mini project and have a little more appreciation for the VHS cassette today we can buy all the parts to replicate a vcr's functionality and put them inside the space of just a cassette itself in an upcoming video I'll review the entire history of the VHS format and we'll look inside a bunch of old equipment if you enjoy videos like these go ahead and subscribe to this channel thanks for watching

Channel: BorisDigital

Views: 5,784

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Id: sYreNd7PwSI

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024