Raspberry Pi Cat TV

Today we’re building a mini television for cats. My cat Benchley loves watching TV. It’s really a mini computer, since I’m using a Raspberry Pi to play YouTube on a little HDMI screen. Let’s get started.

Thanks to DigiKey for supplying the materials for this project! Their boxes make great cat beds.

Materials and supplies:

• Raspberry Pi computer (tested with both 4 and 5)
• Power supply
• 5” HDMI LCD display
• Low-profile HDMI cable, standard to micro
• 1528-2362-ND
• 1528-2371-ND
• 1528-2375-ND
• USB speaker
• USB keyboard
• USB mouse
• 3D printer and filament
• Small screwdriver
• Tape
• Hot glue
• Canned air

The cats are even cuter in motion! Watch the video I made about this build.

For this project, I’m using a display gifted to me by Elecrow. It’s a five-inch LCD with capacitive touch and comes with an HDMI cable for video and audio and a USB cable for power and touchscreen input.

It works with my Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 out of the box, so I just plugged in both cables, as well as a USB speaker, keyboard, and mouse. I used an HDMI cable that has smaller connectors than usual so it didn’t add bulk to the size of the enclosure.

To use the speaker as the audio output, I right-clicked on the audio setting in the upper right and selected my USB device from the list. If it’s not there, you may have to do a few command line steps to install support for USB audio. I installed Pulseaudio, restarted my Pi, and it worked straight away.

To develop the enclosure, I played around with speaker grille patterns and settled on this segmented pattern with circles coming partway through. I test-fit the components inside.

Once I was confident my basic shape would hold and fit all my components, I started playing around with the exterior shape. Also, I wanted to add some ventilation holes because the Raspberry Pi runs pretty hot. I used the honeycomb shape generator in Tinkercad to make grids of holes that are too small for my cat to reach through. You can find my 3D file on Tinkercad.

Then I test fit the components once again, holding them in place with tape so I could test it with Benchley to see if any changes were needed.

I’m just loading Birder King on YouTube in the Pi’s web browser and setting it to full screen. Benchley was super interested and even went around back to see if he could find any birds and squirrels inside the TV.

I discovered that the touch screen was a bit of a problem, as the cats would paw the screen and pause the video. So I replaced the screen’s USB cable with a charge-only cable, disabling the data connection for the touch screen.

Then I installed the screen more permanently with some screws and the speaker and Pi with hot glue. You can set up your hot glue fast if you hit it with a little canned air.

Finally, I brought the finished TV to the living room to see what Benchley and his brother Hamlet think about the final result. They love it!