Turning a old DVD player to a Smart Player
While on my usual weekend thrift store shopping I came across this mint condition Sony Portable DVD Player from 2007. The DVD player’s screen looked amazing, and its battery even worked. After staring at the player for a while and debating if I should buy or not, I finally concluded how much fun it would be to turn this device into something more usable by today’s standards.
I had one of those “aha!” moments and purchased it. As soon as I got home, I took out my Philips head screwdriver and began disassembling the player. Once inside I knew it had the exact amount of space for a Raspberry Pi Zero. I eventually placed one inside the DVD player to see how much extra space was available.
It was at this moment I dedicated my whole day to planning and deciding where everything would be placed. I began to test the circuits. I ran wires around to see how things would look and work. I found the proper voltage to power the Raspberry Pi and the correct video input for the DVD player.
With all of this completed I was then able to power on the DVD player with the Raspberry Pi connected to the internal battery source. I booted right up to RetroPi and played a few games with my Bluetooth controller. However, the sound wasn’t working. I had to use a USB audio driver to output sound to the internal speakers on the device.
From there is was off to the races. I soldered or hot glued everything together, making sure to place each item in the correct location.
Put it all together and from there I had the perfect camping device for playing retro games and watching movies from my SD card.
