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TV/VCR Combo players
TV/VCR Combo players were Ricky's first media player. He went through several from about 1995 to about 2003. Their quality dwindled as they got cheaper with time, and I learned a lot about electronics pulling stuck tapes out and getting them working again and again as a kid. -
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Ricky's Media Player History
Beginning around the mid-90s through to the present, Ricky's been rough on TV's, DVDs, VCRs, and all manner of video player hardware. -
Dawn of the DVDs
Around 2001 our parents got Ricky a DVD player, but knowing it'd be easy for discs to get scratched, they got a 5 disc player with a lockout feature. Unfortunately Ricky quickly figured out the password reset if it was left unplugged overnight. -
Portable DVD Players
It can be tough being a DVD player in the hands of a small child or someone with special needs. snack crumbs get into everything, you're carried around by your screen, and discs are hard to read with scratches and fingerprints all over them. Ricky's gone through quite a few, starting in the early 00s. -
Ricky's DVD player
As time went on, Ricky and I entered adulthood, and eventually we found him a assisted living home where he had an actual house/home to stay in, and not just a glorified nursing facility. Unfotunately we'd also regularly have to replace his TV and DVD players as they broke, and it was hard on him and the caretaker staff. I ended up building him a custom arcade machine with a DVD changer locked safely inside so he'd have his favorite shows and it worked well for more than a year. -
Renovation and updating
For well over a year his jumbo DVD player worked flawlessly, but one day I paid him a visit and his player wasn't working. Someone spilled chocolate milk on it, and it had found it's way into the modified DVD player. Rather than replacing the player I wanted to try a small computer with a media player program loaded with his favorite videos, though this first run proved too easy to get lost in menus. He wasn't happy with me taking it to fix either. -
The first "RickyTV"
I built Ricky a smaller, simpler, and better suited to his needs version of the raspberry pi based player after the first try didn't go so well. I got help from a friend who's better with linux than i'll ever be and we got a straightforward text based menu and encoded the videos to load super fast on the limited hardware. This load-out would be the software basis for several iterations of RickyTV over the years, and this player worked for the best part of 5 years as I recall. -
The little wood boxes
While the main RickyTV was all well and good, a constant in his life he could rely on when DVDs and TVs spent time broken between family visits and caretakers weren't able to repair or replace them, when Dad picked up Ricky for a visit back home there was still DVDs too-scratched and cracked to play to contend with no matter how many we bought. I'd moved cities up to Atlanta, so couldn't play tech support, but I did make a few RickyTV boxes at my new makerspace. -
A tougher media format
In 2019 I began working on fire alarm systems, and by way of that worked in apartments for the hard of sight. I noticed they often had audiobooks shipped on a large USB cartridge that seemed perfect for a rugged easy to use digital media, so I made a new video player from it. Sadly the embedded computer wasn't stable and corrupted the videos, and then covid prevented me from visiting to work on it. -
Prototype portable player
Feeling bad that the cartridge player didn't work out, and wanting to try and replace the need for portable DVD players he'd gone through at a painful rate over the years, I made Ricky a portable video player, but this too suffered from long recharge times, and broke some time after I returned home for work from his rough handling. He sure loved it while it was working though. -
RickyTV 2021
With his RickyTV player now several years old, and slightly worse for wear, I didn't want to push my luck with how long it could last. I made a new player based on the best of the RickyTV and the cartridge based player I'd made pre-covid, and that became RickyTV '21. I used a dedicated media player and tested it for over a week nonstop before delivering it for my Christmas visit, and I'm happy to say it'd worked rock-solid, barring lost cartridges. -
RickyTV 2024 development
Since the 2021 player has worked so well, and I'm active with my makerspace, Freeside Atlanta, I've pressganged a few friends into helping me mull over ideas, design a 3d printable USB cartridge slot so I'm not left scavenging them from audiobook players, and now I'm hoping to develop a new portable player that'll be a refinement of all of the players I've built Ricky over the years up to this point. Easier to make and harder to kill than ever if all goes well.