Raspberry Pi enthusiast and maker Martin Mander has created an excellent Raspberry Pi weather station enclosed in an old Walkman tape player. Using a Raspberry Pi Zero together with a Pimoroni Unicorn HAT HD, which is the perfect size to be seen through the transparent door window of the tape player.
Mander has removed the inner workings of of the 1984 Hitachi Personal Cassette Player and replace them with a Raspberry Pi Zero Unicorn HAT display and loaded the system with the Raspberry Pi Raspbian operating system together with a connection to the Dark Sky Weather API. Check out the video below to learn more about the project and its construction.
“This portable cassette player is now an ambient IoT weather display with early 80s style, displaying a “current conditions” animation, scrolling temperature and rain probability graph through the tape window. When the weather condition changes the servo-controlled headphones on top jiggle back and forth as a subtle alert. Opening the functional tape door we can see that the dusty original components have been replaced with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a Pimoroni Unicorn Hat HD (LED Matrix) and a small servo. The weather data is sourced using a Python script that queries the ultra-accurate Dark Sky Weather API, tailored to my specific location.”
To learn more about the build and create your very own jump over to the Hackster.io website by following the link below, the project has been classified as an intermediate skill level and will take approximately eight hours to complete.
