01
Day 1 — RF Testing
Picked up and tested an RF transmitter. Local station channel 11 with NTSC video signal and audio was eventually chosen and configured.
Retro Over-the-air Weather Channel
Real time weather over RF airwaves to vintage TVs.
- Date
- Oct 2025
- Location
- NoVA
- For
- Nova Labs
- Media
- 4 photos · 1 video
- raspberry pi
- electronics
- retro
- open source
The brief
An Open House event at the local Nova Labs makerspace needed exhibits and demos. I had previously been experimenting with local RF signal broadcasting and put together a custom Nova Labs weather channel using the Weatherstar 4000+ open source project.
Build log
4 entries
02
Day 2 — Broadcast Sample
A laptop and a Playdate handheld game console used the Playdate's Mirror application to view the FMV Game Blippo+ via the RF transmitter to a black and white TV.
03
Day 3 — Raspberry Pi Portable Board
A raspberry pi and the RF transmitter and a power strip were mounted to a pegboard so the broadcast system could be easily moved for exhibit displays.
04
Day 4 - Open House
The open source project Weatherstar 4000+ was hosted on github pages and the raspberry pi acts as a kiosk to view it. A display at Nova Labs makerspace open house was prepared to broadcast it to multiple vintage TVs over the air.
