Raspberry Pi Housed Inside A Computer Monitor

rpi-inside-a-computer-monitor

Behold, something we’ve always wanted. [Matthieu] mounted his Raspberry Pi board inside of a computer monitor. His work makes for the cheapest smart-TV modification we can possibly think of.

The image above shows the monitor’s driver board on the left, with the Raspberry Pi mounted on the back plastic cover. [Matthieu] used a short HDMI cable to connect the two. The HDMI connector plugs into the RPi directly. The other end has been cut off and the wires soldered to the DVI pins on the monitor’s PCB. This is not a problem since HDMI and DVI use electrically identical protocols. The one thing missing is audio. But if you were pulling off the same hack with a device that had HDMI (like a television) it would just be a matter of also soldering in the audio connections. While he had his iron hot he also connected a 5V source from the monitor board to the RPi. He completes his hack by cutting a slot in the monitor case to allow access to the SD card.

We’ve long wanted an XBMC computer we could velcro to the back of the TV and the RPi turned out to be just the thing. Now we’ve got to consider cracking open the TV to replicate this internalization hack!

22 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi Housed Inside A Computer Monitor

      1. Hot glue or tape. In my experience it’s a toss up which one will keep things in place for the long term & release easily when you not it to, and not release when you don’t want it to.Personally I have never been a fan of hot glue. Here it wouldn’t be difficult to use stand offs that grab the board edges to mount the raspi, and create a mechanical strain relief for the cabling.

  1. But most tvs these days already have embedded linux systems running them…
    (and I am a sad panda because mine isn’t one that someone has already hacked into, and I don’t have the balls to risk bricking it.)

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  2. I made the same with a brand new TV, and i discovered that the TV has already an ARM inside, and it is more powerful than the RPI ! with usb and Ethernet.

    So next time, it is better to hack the tv firmware than adding hardware

    1. I agree… wouldn’t be easier to design a little box and add something like velcro, so if either the RPi or the Display go bad, you can re-use the one that is still working?

  3. RPi inside my pre-smarttv samsung is the hack that was already on my list. now it jumped a few places up.

    it is either a hack to make in internal or a RPi docking station with a 5v and hdmi (i own a reprap). Would be ideal opertunity to fix the “girlfriend: you broke the tv again by updating the mediaplayer” problem. Would be ideal to swap stable ad bleeding edge versions of xbmc.

  4. lol @ rpi for a media streamer. yes it -can- do it…. just, poorly. unless of course you have very low standards and expectations. to each his own.

    also, if you’re in a crowd, wear condoms on both your ears…. i think its funny.

      1. really? enjoying all that lag in your UI (very obvious with high res art and themes), barely functioning/unreliable script support, lack of HD audio support, and inability to play high bitrate HD video content (think bluray/UNcompressed content)?

        cool. i have higher expectations and requirements, i suppose.

  5. I had to replace the power supply in my TV. While I was in there I noted there is a whole lot of space in there. Enough to probably mount a full on mini-ATX motherboard were there not huge heat sinks. But a RasPi would work just fine too.

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