You’re not tuned to The Scenery Channel—what you’re looking at here is a fake window powered by our favorite SBC, the Raspberry Pi. This clever project was created by a maker known over at Reddit as Snicker1633.
As with many impressive Raspberry Pi projects, this one was created mainly out of necessity. In the project thread, Snicker1633 explains that they work out of an enclosed office without any access to windows. To alleviate the isolation, they decided to make one from scratch using a Raspberry Pi 4 that not just looks nice but also gives a peak at his home security camera.
In short, the window is made with an old monitor that outputs a live stream of their front yard recorded using a Wyze Cam V3. The camera maintains a fix on the yard while the Pi outputs the live stream to the window monitor in real-time using the built-in omxplayer.
For Snicker1633’s creation, a 32-inch LG flat screen monitor is used as the screen for the window but this could be interchanged for any display compatible with the Pi. To make it look like a window, Snicker1633 attached molding around and across the monitor. Because it’s built using a standard monitor, the Pi connects easily using HDMI.
In order to stream the Wyze camera footage, the camera had to be updated with a specific real-time streaming protocol (RTSP) firmware edition. According to Wyze, this firmware is still in beta but Snicker1633 has proven the firmware to be perfectly functional for this project. With this firmware update, the Raspberry Pi is able to access the Wyze cam RTSP stream and display it through omxplayer.
Overall the project isn’t very complicated to construct but rather is striking in its purpose and execution. If you want to create a fake window for yourself, check out the original thread over at Reddit and dig into the comments for extra details about how it goes together. Many of the components, including the screen, window frame, and camera could be interchanged for like parts making this a very versatile undertaking.
If this project has you excited but isn’t quite what you’re looking to make at home, peruse our list of best Raspberry Pi projects for more inspiring creations and other projects that are sure to put your unused Pi to work.
