[atrain] wants to know if we’ve got any thoughts on things to do with old CRT displays instead of giving them away or recycling them. We’ve seen pic programmers and oscilloscope projects, but even I’m curious to see what you guys have to say.
So, got a better idea? Let’s hear it.
Salvage it to make a lifter power supply see here about that ( http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/lift2exp/index.htm ) or there ( http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm ) to learn more about lifters…
Posted at 7:44 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by Aomapes
I have a cool idea, but don’t know if it works, a X-ray machine :)
CRTs are shielded, but produce some x-rays.
Accordings to wikipedia, they are allowed to produce up to 0.5 mR/h at a distance of 5cm. A disagnostic x-ray requires about 1.4 mGy, which is about 100mR. So about 200 hours. Of course its not that
simple: e.g. x-rays from CRTs are softer, modern CRT usually produce far less radiation than the limit, maybe its not enough to distinguish it from background radiation ….
But maybe its enough to show the existence of the x-rays to expose a film (for many hours) sticked to the CRT (with some cardboard to shield the light).
If that works: try to reproduce simple pattern cut out of lead foil, or paint patterns with the right input AV-input or oszi-input, and finally try to x-ray some small (thin?) stuff. :)))
Older color CRT should work better, higher acceleration voltage is better (but DONT tweak it to produce more radiation).
Posted at 8:15 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by SomeOne
It would be very hard to do, but it is possible a CRT could be converted to a vector monitor. Perfect for playing Asteroids, perhaps under MAME.
You would have to replace all the control circuits, probably with an FPGA and three ADCs (x/y/intensity).
Posted at 8:58 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by MoJo
Insert a nano-board and make an all in one pc. Ive seen this done at a local shop. He took a 21 inch Cornerstone and inserted a nano-board along with hd, dvd-rom, etc. He then tweaked the powersupply so the pc and monitor were powered by the monitors power supply. A very cool looking idea. (Yes Mac has already done it. Mac is kinda like the Simpsons. Theve done everything!)
Posted at 9:03 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by William
you could use it as a monitor for a MAME or other arcade project. I was planning on using one of my old CRTs to make a Cocktail-table style MAME cabinet.
Posted at 9:37 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by twistedsymphony
i was just wondering bout that very thing, and thanks to google found this nifyt project form MAKE
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/08/monitor_hack_high_voltage.html
Posted at 9:43 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by computerguru365
I think that the aquarium idea would probably be the best idea. Although not the most original, definitely the easiest to pull off for the casual user.
Posted at 10:07 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by your name
Similiar, could be done with a CRT:
I have a huge old Sony Trinitron commercial TV. The “commercial” implies that it has a huge metal frame around it, and accepts RCA input but with a weird BNC-like connection. Anyways, my brother in law wants me to put it on it’s back so the screen is facing up, and put a glass plate overtop of it, making it a coffee table. Play some cool abstract videos or visualizations and you’re done!
Build a Tesla coil?
http://www.aaroncake.net/circuits/hvgen.asp
Posted at 10:30 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by pi3832
Always fun to see a CRT blown to bits…
Posted at 10:36 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by Andrew
Building on what th0mas said:
coffee table/MAME cabinet???
Like the one where you can play two player sitting down facing your opponent.
Posted at 10:56 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by Conor H
I friend of mine is collecting old CRT monitors and televisions in order to make a small tesla coil. IM not sure the exact workings of it but if i understand it correctly he is using the transformer that puts a charge on the front of the glass. He will aqquire as many as he can and connect them in a serise and then use them too release one large high voltage low amperage charge. I will try to post a link to somre more information later if i get it.
Posted at 11:23 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by Tom
… ok I need to work on approving my posts faster…
Posted at 11:25 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by twistedsymphony
While in college I would go to thrift stores and purchase old green screen monitors. Apple Monitor iii (yes that’s 3) and even an early Mac. I’d then open them up, cut the wires leading to the deflection coils, and then wire them into either series or parallel (different monitors/axes worked better with one or the other) with the speakers to my stereo.
So basically I made a very inaccurate oscilloscope.
This produced analogue visualizations way before winamp or iTunes did the same. In fact, I wrote an iTunes pluggin a few years ago to simmulate the effect.
I had a Led Zeppelin bootleg that at one point would actually draw a pretty clear guitar on the screen. Unfortunately the instrument being played at that moment was a harmonica, but it was cool.
For those that are less adventurous, if you have an old monitor/tv with a composite (RCA) input you can simply plug in a speaker wire and you’ll get a banding pattern that throbs with the music.
I had two monitors mounted about 12 feet high in my dorm room in college, one throbbing and one doing the oscilloscope thing. People would bring CDs buy to see what they looked like. Ben Harper was always impressive, as was Dark Side of the Moon.
Posted at 11:26 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by a random John
You can use a crt monitor as a HV psu capable of providing about 30 KV, very easy to do. All you have to do is open up the monitor, pull off the the lead with the suction cup connected to the back of the crt (+ voltage) and then use the chassis as ground. Its that easy and also very dangerous!
Posted at 11:37 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by sidewaysdan
I volunteer at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, as a docent and in the Exhibits department. I’m restoring the Ship’s Inertial Navigation Room, and I installed an old CRT monitor in place of a broken CRT screen that displayed navigation information generated by the gyros and an old Univac 642B mainframe. I wrote a JavaScript-based web page that generates fictional navigation data based on the time of day, so now the formerly dead console looks like it’s actually operating.
Posted at 12:05 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Dave Barak
Whoa, random john, that sounds awesome. Do you have a more specific tutorial on how to do that? Sounds like a great idea.
Posted at 12:25 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Alex
I always thought it was fun to shoot old tv sets and stuff. There is just a satisfying thing about plinking a tv with a bb gun from 30 or 40 feet away…..
Posted at 12:34 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Mike
if they’re shallow enough, say 12″ deep, then line a load up and point them at a wall, still hooked into your usual outputs. levoila! Worlds largest ambilight – with extremely good colour reproduction.
OR
Use the shell as a bin.
OR
use the coffee table idea, but hijack the cable and send a slow cycle of white noise through each channel in turn.
Posted at 12:36 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by mike
I’ve done the same thing John has. The quick and dirty way to do this is to find where the horizontal and vertical coils meet the mainboard and unplug them. plug the horizontal coil into the vertical plug. then attach an amplified audio signal to the vertical coil. it will produce a relatively slow (60Hz) line across the screen (very bright!! turn down the brightness!) and it will me modulated by the audio signal.
keep in mind there are very very dangerous voltages present inside a crt. be careful!!
Posted at 12:45 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Steve DiRaddo
Cover the screen with a sheet of aluminium foil and attach a wire to the foil with an alligator clip. Hold the bare end of the wire while you turn the monitor on and off.
You get a fun shock!
Posted at 12:49 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Michael
I have always wanted to take 307,200 monitors out into the desert, lay them on their backs and drive each one as a pixel (640×480). More resolution, more monitors.
I figured on just sending a particular single color to each monitor, but if you really wanted to get fancy and had the horsepower, maybe you could do the photomosaic thing and send images instead.
Since I have many big ideas and even more laziness, I think this is a job for someone else. Any takers?
Posted at 12:57 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by lelandwitter
Make a jacob’s ladder. This guy’s tutorial is pretty solid, but it is very dangerous. http://www.afrotechmods.com/reallycheap/jacob/jacob.htm
We used an oil burner transformer, and I’ve heard good things about neon sign transformers. The middle schoolers lost it when we gave our presentation.
Posted at 12:58 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Dean Putney
Or if you have a whole bunch of tv’s and monitors, make the jacobs ladders in addition to a tesla coil or a mosquito zapper or something.
Posted at 2:30 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Mike
alex,
Note: the following is potentially dangerous. crt screens can hold a big charge for a long time after being unplugged and can serious mess you up or even kill you. what follows does not contain any safety information so if you don’t know what you’re doing then don’t mess with this stuff.
Steve’s description is pretty similar to what I used to do. While I did use the vertical scan signal at times to produce a more traditional waveform, I found that using one speaker to drive the horizontal and one to drive the vertical made more interesting patterns. basically I’d find the wires that go to the two coils at the back of the tube. If they could be unplugged I’d unplug them but sometimes I’d just cut them. I did this on probably 5 different montiors for various people and it was always a bit different.
Anyhow, after cutting the two wires leading to a coil I’d then take a wire leading from my stereo to my speaker ($200 sharp all in one from a big box store, nothing nice) and wire the coil either in series or parallel with the speaker. Sometimes series would work better, sometimes parallel would. Then I’d do the same with the other speaker and the other coil. Again, each coil was different so I might do parallel on one and series on the other. Whatever produced the most deflection without going off the screen. I’d be playing music through it the whole time and turn it on occasionally to test.
So in the end I’d have the left speaker doing vertical deflection and the right speaker doing horizontal. When sound was coming out of both speakers I’d get crazy spirograph type patterns. When sound was mostly out of one side or the other the patterns would be mostly horizontal or vertical. pink floyd would have lots of transitions from one to the other.
The patterns were always very reactive to the music, unlike many visualizers in itunes or whatnot. more volume made for bigger patterns. bass made for big loops, higher tones for tighter loops.
I should note that one monitor I did this to started smoking almost immediately. I assume this is because the power that should have been going from the sawtooth waveform generators to the coils for h and v scan was now not going anywhere. if I had been more sophisticated I’d have measured the resistance of the coils and put resistors on the wires coming out of the board to replace the coils.
Again old Apple ][ and c=64 monitors always worked. I sent a friend a Mac classic modded to plug into his stereo for his birthday and he still has it and it still runs 10 years later.
I am in the process of putting together a website that will host my software projects. I’ll include the iTunes pluggin that mimics the green screen effect and the winamp pluggin that I wrote if I can find it.
Given that my current project combines wiimote head tracking with laser pointer detection for a fps game (I’ve got it all working but need to add polish like explosions) I’m thinking that you might be interested in posting a link to the site when it goes live in a few weeks.
Posted at 3:55 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by a random John
Videowall is an option
http://www.kiberpipa.org/~igzebedze/cp/vw-howto/
Only in Slovene language but if you need any quick translation I can help :)
Posted at 6:22 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by christooss
i’m surprised that noone has mentioned building a ‘lifter’ yet.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/lift2exp/index.htm
some of the power supplies for these were taken from old CRT monitors. (Note: the specific link is in french, but most of the site is in english)
Posted at 7:13 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by silic0re
we have my $3 diy hv powersupply
http://www.instructables.com/id/reupdated-Simple-flyback-driver/ if u want me to fix the grammer juet shoot me an email to hvhaxor@gmail.com
Posted at 8:23 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by alex mccown
silic0re the lifter was way back!
lelandwitter u buy the screens, cables, genorator and i’ll carry them and lay then out in the desert and pic the image to go on them. hmmm gotesex!! imagin the astronoughts throughing up in their spacesuites ROLF!!
i hear all the ‘real’ rockstars drop them out of a penthouse window… now post that on utube and u’ll be famous ;D
Posted at 8:41 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by HeBD
note that the following hack-a-day link seems to cover what I did 10 years ago but without the spirograph effect:
http://www.hackaday.com/2006/11/05/mac-se-30-audio-visualizer/
Posted at 10:33 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by a random John
I want someone who knows about TV innards to make a howto for hooking RGB signals directly into the CRT driver circuit, bypassing the NTSC junk (like the SCART connector in Europe).
Why? Because (most) game systems output RGB, but with a 15KHz horiz sync that VGA monitors can’t use. Since analog TV’s will be pretty much useless by next year (converter box? puh-lease…) they might as well be converted into (relatively) high quality videogame monitors.
Posted at 11:01 pm on Feb 25th, 2008 by Rhymes with Seamus
I did what #19 said with a big screen TV after experimenting with a CRT once. I would definitely say be careful with larger displays. I’ve never been tasered before but I probably got a similar sensation lol. You can get some pretty big arcs too with a grounded aluminum can.
Posted at 12:45 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by Will
Linux on Obsolete Displays: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bchafy/lood.html
Basically, through hardware and software hackery, use one VGA output to drive three discrete (greyscale) signals. IMO for stuff like coding, console/server stuff, and word processing, it’s not too terribly bad.
Pretty sure I’ve seen it posted here originally.
Posted at 2:20 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by DanAdamKOF
In keeping with this idea maybe some projects using old televisions would be good as well.
the digital broadcast switchover means that there will be some good trash pickings coming up very soon in the way of functional television sets thrown out by the rich and the ignorant.
(ghod bless ‘em)
of course you should be careful.
don’t want some damn fool zapping themselves with a flyback.
…or do we?
Posted at 8:05 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by strider_mt2k
CRTs can be made into left-right-reversing mirror image displays with ease: All you have to do is reverse the polarity on the horizontal steering coil. The equivalent modification on an LCD monitor requires special DSP hardware or software, I’m pretty sure.
So why would you want a left-right-reversing mirror image display? So you could reflect the image off a mirror, of course, and still have it legible. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps to make a teleprompter, or to make a video chat display that puts the camera right behind the apparent screen so that the communicating parties can look directly at the screen and at the camera at the same time.
I’m currently working on some blinkenlights hardware and software using many many monitors as Pixels. but it is not yet ready… Will post it to Hack a day when done.
Posted at 8:59 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by Aqntbghd
A project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time now is the ‘All-in-One’ PC using a CRT monitor casing. Removing the actual tube and replacing it with the LCD screen from TFT. Motherboard, drives, PSU etc could then all be mounted internal to the CRT case.
I have to admit, some of the CRT cases I’ve seen have looked really nice (mainly the black and silver).
Alternatively, from the new CRT monitors I’ve had open, there is usually a bit of free space. How about mounting a mini-itx or nano-itx board in the CRT casing?
Posted at 9:07 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by Sagum
Use it as a part of an array in a work shop? Or in an office if it is big enough?
Perhaps case mod a PC into it. Or something
Posted at 9:25 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by Harry
#1Show bright white on the screen, put a metal ring around the front with some mesh inside, (so you can see white if you look straight at it). Hang it up high, outside, and night, in the summer time, and attract bugs. then do some basic high voltage hack on the metal ring and screen material so the bugs get zapped.
#2 Use the ultra-high pitched sound those things put off to be like a dog whistle, to call your dogs in for dinner, or to do some kind of dog behavior adjustment. I’m sure they can hear that sound perfectly clear, so you could train them to do stuff based on when they hear the sound. You could wire the AC into a solid state relay (or just hook it up to a DPMS screen saver) to make a computer turn the sound on and off (if say you want your dog to come back inside every night at 7pm)
Posted at 10:51 am on Feb 26th, 2008 by Mike
You could tie a solar panel straight against the screen, and have a program that controls an analog voltage based on the color it displays. You could probably regulate voltage in a very precise way doing that. The frequency would be relatively low compared to even a sound card, but it might be useful for some crazy hack.
Posted at 12:04 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Mike
Sean:
Ever used that idea as a prank? If somebody doesn’t have the software to flip the screen (like nvidia/intel drivers can do) they will be in trouble, and its simple to pull off.
mike: You can just use a CFL to attract them + 120v grill to fry em’. You don’t need anything more than that, definitely not the many kV inside a monitor. It would be fun I must admit, but such a waste of power.
Quite a few people have mentioned arrays. Is there a way to make an array out of NTSC tv signals? I only have small tvs, and a 2×2 grid of tvs would be awesome :D
Does anyone know if you could make a crt replace a standard arcade monitor?
Posted at 1:29 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Arthur M
Make a Squirl catcher like in water boy using the electric fence idea and put sum corn in it
Posted at 1:42 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Crazy
If its still pressurized you have a bomb,
tape some explosives to it or just rig up a cinder block to hit a nail and wammo you have a exploding glass bomb! =)
just my 2 cents
Posted at 2:35 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by A_Blind_man
How about a DIY projector? just set the contrast to crazy (may require modding to increase the contrast/brightness enough to be useable) and put a big ‘ol Fresnel lens in front. a little bulky though. (i actually tried that on an old crt viewfinder, small but very low-res.) or you could just gut the control circuitry and make a vector monitor/oscilicope. You could also harvest all the capacitors and make a small emp cannon to ‘test electronic equipment’ (just use an exploding wire in a parabolic reflector)
Posted at 5:08 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by joe57005
Dean you site is hilarious!
Posted at 5:30 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by vato
yeeeah, um, a lot of interesting ideas, and a lot of insanely dangerous ones…
How about a “how-to” on how not not kill yourself freaking around with old monitors and tvs for starters?
by the way, the three best projects for old monitors are the spirograph effect, the O-scope mod (essentially the spirograph effect with some circuitry to make it a lot more accurate) and the reversed image mod (great for teleprompters or game cabinets – reverse the image, reflect off a mirror, the greater the distance between the screen and the mirror, the larger the image).
As far as safety goes: one person mentioned removing the high voltage line from the tube (red line with a suction cup). Please baby jebus dont do this unless you know what you are doing! briefly: unplug monitor (duh) clip a wire to a long flat blade screw driver. Clip other end to the chasis frame of the monitor. slip the blade under and make contact with the connector under the cup. occasionally you may even hear a slight pop.
I always hear people warn of the large caps on the pcb being dangerous. Yeah, they are large, and can give you a snap. what most people fail to mention, is that the tube is the biggest cap of all! it *will* kill you.
Posted at 8:00 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by MRE
If you find a particularly old and beefy crt you could build a single transistor flyback DC high voltage driver from the transformer in it.
Sam Barros at powerlabs has detailed instructions and videos of operation here: http://www.powerlabs.org/flybackdriver.htm
Posted at 8:02 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Leec
#51, no in most cases. The majority of arcade games sync at 15khz, whereas VGA starts at 30khz (IIRC). Doesn’t work the same way.
Some arcade games, such as those that run on the NAOMI and AtomisWave motherboards, natively output VGA. You can use those!
Hey, old CRTs+speakers make for a nice compact game system setup for Dreamcast, 360, etc. But I think we all knew that.
Posted at 4:33 am on Feb 27th, 2008 by DanAdamKOF
oops for got the link
http://s95417013.onlinehome.us/ktekx/2.htm
I joked around about it, but MRE is exactly right.
When I started scrounging as a kid I was given a very specific lecture by my older brother about old TVs and how they can kill even after years of being outdoors in a dump and I never forgot it.
Anything posted about working with this stuff should include _lots_ of safety-related information as well.
Posted at 7:54 am on Feb 27th, 2008 by strider_mt2k
See this “Largest TV sculpture” in the book of Guinness World Records: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2007/11/071121.aspx and here: http://www.europosparkas.lt/Infomedis/infotree.htm It is not exactly CRT, but why not try to break the record of the geographical Centre of Europe?
Posted at 11:06 am on Feb 27th, 2008 by Sanctus
This was posted on the Musical Instrument Makers Forum (MIMF.COM) — discharge all high-voltage components, then extract and use the fine magnet wire inside the transformers and deflection yokes to wind pickups for electric guitars.
Posted at 3:29 pm on Feb 27th, 2008 by Alan Peterson
one word. “trebuchet”
if you don’t know. you need to.
:)
Posted at 1:46 am on Feb 28th, 2008 by popproject
electric car
Posted at 7:41 pm on Feb 29th, 2008 by wacho77
Right now rather than going out to buy a HD TV or a new LCD monitor, I picked up a VGA Female-Female adapter from a local PC store and am using it for a HD 360 monitor.
Posted at 3:31 pm on Mar 1st, 2008 by Newfie
would it be possible to turn that old crt into a projector of sorts?
Posted at 12:20 am on Mar 3rd, 2008 by Toast
I’ve a couple of dead crt’s that I’ve gutted and turned into bins :-) the perfect thing for a nerd to have in his house.
Just put the front and back sections back together, add some hooks on the inside if you want it to hold a garbage bag and be very careful with the insides of the monitor.. act as if it’s all going to zap you :-P
Posted at 11:31 pm on Mar 6th, 2008 by krusher00
Wow, lots of really bad dangerous and wasteful uses!
Let me add one by suggesting keeping them as-is (maybe with a power cut-off so an unacceptably high quescent draw of 20W doesn’t pollute and impoverish) and using them by sending your own NTSC broadcasts at them; monitors for VHS stuff you haven’t trashed^Wrecycled, sure, but moreover:
House it high in a corner or center of a room, under cloth dust blinds, where either the front-heavy weight is of some use as >> ballast for a bass speaker
Posted at 2:35 am on Mar 14th, 2008 by Steve Nordquist
Doh! Monitors; no IrDA, no tuner; use the twisted-pair video Tx/Rx (plus 0-power power-on-when-video-present switching) methods Maxim’s advertising with (and selling via the usual distributors) and add a kenpo-mask kind of thing for the front controls so it’s hardened against mishap.
It’s fine to use it in winter of course if you need the room temperature kept up. With that in mind, may as well attach a few rowing ropes to opposing walls and wire those up to a 64-bit paint program on a some box; you can then paint violently without feeling as bad about it.
If you like NO enough, you could power the monitor and some Jacob’s Ladders (n.b.: that air arc gets hot; have a ceramic ceiling!) off the rowing gearboxes. (Then row or do kenpo.)
Maybe finally sculpt and paint (test compatibility first), dye or antique the cabinet to offer a better matte, comping and facing angles than _| , add light tables to the sides of it, and generally treat it as less deferentially than you did when it was an irreplaceable investment.
Put a big acrylic block over the front and use it as a video cutting jig.
This safety stuff kind of kills it given the logo here; just have someone willing to do chest compressions around (100bpm) in case you forget to bleed a capacitor on that 40″ 2300×1900 CRT you were going to shoot up. Maybe you expect something like the mirror scene from Army of Darkness to happen if you get in there and bust things?
Posted at 3:11 am on Mar 14th, 2008 by Steve Nordquist
Sorry if anone’s posted anything similar, didn’t seen anything. Anyway, you could use them to make holograms, like the following link shows:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/864238/make_a_cool_hologram_illusion/
But, what I’m thinking is if you keep the brightness settings normal, get some cheap wood and build a cabinet around it (or convert a suitable cabinet), you’ll have your own retro gaming machine, just need to chuck in a joystick and an old console, or better yet an old pc with loads of emulators on.
Posted at 4:20 am on Oct 24th, 2008 by Cyber WonderBoy
there is a old peice of software to turn your crt moniter into a am transmitter
Posted at 1:07 pm on Jan 17th, 2009 by anon
hack a day serves up fresh hacks each day, every day from around the web and a special how-to hack each week.
powered by wordpress
Well, with enough of them, you could build an array of them, with some appropriately high-tech buttons and keyboards, and call it a movie set.
You might be able to (carefully) salvage the power supply and use it for Hi-V applications like a jacob’s ladder or plasma globe… you might even be able to convert the tube itself, I’m not sure, I’ve never worked with one.
Posted at 7:31 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by Skyler Orlando