Be careful, Gen X-ers — there’s a nostalgia overload heading your manner, courtesy of this over-the-air TV simulator. And it has us feeling a bit Saturday morning cartoon-ish, or perhaps even a bit Afterschool Particular.
[Shane C Mason]’s “FieldStation42” construct facilities round a period-correct colour TV, and rightly so — a contemporary TV could be jarring right here, and changing the CRT on this irreplaceable TV could be unthinkable. Programming comes by way of painstakingly collected sitcoms, dramas, information broadcasts, and specials, all digitized and saved on disk and arranged by the unique networks the packages got here from. Python operating on a Raspberry Pi does the heavy lifting right here, growing a schedule of packages for the week that is sensible for the time of day — morning information and speak, afternoon soaps, the standard household hour and prime time choices, and at last [Carson] rounding out the day, as a result of that’s all we had for late evening.
As for switching between stations, moderately than threat damaging the previous TV, [Shane] actually upped his nostalgia sport and located an previous antenna rotator management field. These had been used to steer the directional antenna towards totally different transmitters again within the day, particularly in fringe areas just like the one he grew up in. He added a set of contacts to the knob and a Pi Pico, which talks to the principle Pi and controls which “channel” is being considered. He additionally added an impact of fading and noise within the video and audio between channels, simulating the antenna transferring. The video beneath exhibits it in motion.
For many who missed the Golden Age of TV, loosen up; as [Shane] accurately surmises after going by means of this complete undertaking, Golden Ages solely exist in your thoughts. Issues had been definitely totally different with 70s mass media, a truth which this construct captures neatly, however that doesn’t imply they had been higher. Apart from Saturday mornings, in fact — these had been objectively higher in each manner.
