TinyTV 2

For today’s entry in my “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Device” series, I’m highlighting a brand-new gadget that is definitely a little weird, and only *simulates* being old and obsolete: The TinyTV 2!

I recommend having sound on for this one 😁

This is a very small retro-style television, measuring only 1.9" x 1.4" total (aka 47.6mm x 36.6mm), with a one-inch (26mm) LCD screen. Despite how adorably tiny it is, it’s surprisingly full-featured: it has a Raspberry Pi RP2040 CPU, 8GB of storage, a built-in battery, and the almost microscopic volume and channel-change knobs actually work, as does the fingertip-sized remote control.

The video content on the TinyTV is a combination of classic TV opening themes I downloaded from YouTube and converted into the custom TinyTV file format, along with a rotating Zscaler logo animation I created in DaVinci Resolve. Actually filming this video was surprisingly tricky, because the TinyTV itself is so small. At first I tried filming with my iPhone but couldn’t get anything close to the result I wanted, so I switched to using my Sony A6400 camera + 70mm macro lens, along with a variety of improvised lights to illuminate the scene. It ended up being a really fun challenge!

That’s it for today - once we get through SKO and my life returns to some sense of normalcy, I’ll be back with some genuinely retro entries to this series that I’ve been working on for a long time. Happy Friday!