How To Send Memes & Selfies In The 1970s - Vintage SSTV System 

Hey there! The way that the images would have been captured back in the day is to use a long exposure on film. There were cameras built especially to photograph slow scan and fast scan crt screens. You can easily simulate the same with a long exposure on any modern digital camera or smartphone. Very high quality images can be reproduced this way, and it was used extensively in early scanning electron microscopes among many other applications. You will probably find an output on your unit to sync shutter on a connected camera which can be used to automatically photograph received images. If you want a suggestion as to what to do with it, maybe do a Raspberry Pi project to automatically capture and publish long exposures of the received images. You could park it on HF and give out the freq so hams could have the challenge to send a compatible qsl and see it on your vintage receiver.

It's great to see vintage SSTV hardware. I'd say it's worth preserving. I think the toggle switch is a modification to switch it to a higher Robot standard. The off switch is on the brightness control.

Good old MMSSTV, really a swiss army knife for SSTV. I even decoded the meme you encoded by putting my headphones up to the mic, and there is something so amazing and ridiculous about that, an image transmitted through so many layers of audio.

Robot8 was the only mode back in my time, in fact it was called just SSTV as it was the only one. I never saw an off the shelf hardware to do that. Hams used scopes to receive that and made their own circuits. You can't even do that today as digital scopes have XY modes but not a Z axis (brightness). Maybe some scope has but I never saw. Analog scopes mostly have a Z axis, sometimes connected to the back of the scope.

Thank you, Fluff, for supervising your human during the experiment.

I had one of these and the matching camera (that plugged into that Cinch connector). The camera was a beast. All the cool kids had one of these back in the day. LOL

I can't stress how cool is that. we used to usend SSTV via HF bands, AM ... what a piece of history man and is pristine.

how do the twin cities have so many cool shops??

The origins of the original SSTV standard (120 lines, 6 seconds/frame) go back to 1957, in a system developed by Copthorne Macdonald as a college project. It's an entirely analog system, designed to be used by ham radio operators whose FCC-mandated audio bandwidth was under 3 kHz. The Robot 70 decoder/display and model 80 camera was the first commercial SSTV unit made, appearing in 1970. The pair cost ~$1000 then. Robot also introduced a slight variation in the SSTV scan standard, called Robot 8, adding 8 lines of digitally-generated gray-scale video using RTL logic ICs. The slight increase in frame time was easily absorbed by contemporary analog circuits and the accurate gray steps made setup easier. The CRT in your monitor (as in Macdonald's original design) uses a P7 long persistence phosphor so the images could remain visible for a (short) while after transmission. In the late '70s, some FAA weather radar locations used a slightly modified Robot 8 system for picture delivery over phone lines. By then digital memory started to be cheap enough to store the pictures in RAM, and all-analog picture display systems like this one became obsolete.

Before Robot came put, my father homebuilt his SSTV rig based on instructions from Cap McDonald, the inventor or SSTV. He used an orange radar display, since it had good persistence.

A totally impractical idea: Allow people to upload images via a web page, encode the images and view them via a webcam pointed at the ROBOT. An awesome way to flush bandwidth down the toilet.

Very cool to see something like that in action, i always wondered how they looked as we had an old teacher in circuit theory who sometimes chuckled at this hot new internet thing and said something like "ah, in my day it would sometimes get so boring that there were those of us who would sit before a screen and watch it build up an image line by line"

I am so jealous. This perfectly combines my unhealthy interests in both amateur radio and long persistence phosphor CRTs! I don't think it was ever officially allowed to send SSTV over CB, but I doubt that stopped anybody.

Any time you want to try it on the radio let me know. I have a legal limit sstv station. can do b/w8 or b/w12 both will work. 73 K4RNA

Lol, no buffer except screen's phosphor. Brutal!

The guys at FreeGeek are legends around the UMN campus! They let a friend and I go into the back to buy controllers that weren't up for sale yet, and have an entire section just for the recycling of old hardware! You can buy the recycling for scrap value too. Definitely an amazing place for any sort of electronics

The first time I see such a device, it reminds me of the first storage oscilloscopes. They also had a cathode ray tube with a long phosphorescent layer. The device seems to get warm at the top, and the cat seems to like it.

Such a cool blast from the past! I wish we had shops like you have around my area!

I got some SSTV apps on my phone, some buddies got them too. Fun to turn them on when were hanging out and send each other random pictures

Make a clock signal so you have a shop clock. Would be cool to see the clock drawn on it. Analog and digital. Maybe an arduino with an audio signal that codes the audio clock in real time. Or just redo the inside to a clock display. Either way would be cool.

Fluff is a beautiful cat. Cool gadget. Thanks saveit...

The "not working very well" probably has as much to do with the RU-vid audio compression as the hardware. It messes with the sync pulses, which makes everything else a bit wobbly. I have seen B/W 8 used in the wild although it's certainly not the most common. MMSSTV has a still-maintained fork called YONIQ. qsstv, Black Cat SSTV, and Multiscan for Mac all also support it. It's often just called "Robot 8".

SSTV is the coolest stuff i found randomly on the internet so far. Nice showcase of such a machine! I always thought the SSTV stuff came up in the late 90s / early 2000s, but its cool to see that it has a longer tradition in Hardware-form!

4:45 I'm old enough to remember the days before power buttons were invented. Tangled mess of cords everywhere, plugging and unplugging the wrong stuff trying to get things turned on or off. Dad yelling at us kids because we killed the TV in the middle of the game when we meant to unplug the Lite Brite. Or when mom tried to shut off the Oster mixer and instead unplugged the oven ruining the brontosaurus steaks.

DUDE! I haven't even seen the video yet, but I really have to say that's an amazing find! I love SSTV, and I can't wait to see how the mode started out. I'm a ham myself so I hope you manage to get this thing on the air in some capacity!

"Barely recognizable Memes"...........Worth it !!! I thought that was rather cool.

So trippy! Amazing how far things have come.

You can see it's nice and warm, perfect for a kitty.

Didn’t even know this tech existed and I’m a boomer. Very cool and the visual effect is awesome.

On the risk of someone pointing out the same thing: It looks like the power switch is built into the brightness knob. Turn it counterclockwise and it should click off. But maybe the switch is broken. Or needs significant force to operate.

That sounds at first is so satisfying

please turn down the brightness of the beam, the circle around is it from electrons bouncing off the back surface of the monitor and re-impacting the screen. with such high intensity, the phosphor coating will be slowly ablated. (worn away from the electron impact)

SSTV is still going strong. Modern radios and computers make it easy to send, receive and store.

Even though I receive SSTV once in a blue moon, I completely forgot that slow scan monitors were a thing. I’m jealous!

Very interesting piece of kit. The sound took me right back to loading computer games from cassette tape in the early eighties!

This is awesome! I knew nothing about SSTV before my coffee this morning. Thanks for sharing this, especially for those of us who knew nothing about it!

Videojet was the very first in 1969. "First footsteps on the Moon" Went across all TV screens.

Damn that sound makes my friend couldn't sleep

When I started working for HP at their Fullerton office repairing the HP35 calculator the son of the founder of Robot worked at that office.

4:42 Donny and Fluff: I purr that into the video description below. 😁

Seeing this makes me want to play with SSTV some now. I'm not usually one to enjoy some of the more modern stuff as much but early devices and modes like this are quite interesting. Curious how many people out there would be able to even respond to a BW/8 contact. Obsolete as it is this equipment using long phosphor CRTs are gorgeous.

Haven't thought about SSTV for years. Hearing those tones brings back memories.

This is super cool. I've never successfully decoded SSTV due to the terrible suburban radio noise and lack of a decent antenna (apartment) but I've always thought it was a great 'vintage' mode and I'm glad it's still alive and kicking. Also, who else is here from Ringway Manchester?

I wonder how many cat pics hams used to send on SSTV? I got my license in 1986, but was never into SSTV. But I"m guessing that many many cats were made famous....

SSTV takes me back.

Hook up GPredict to the SSTV audio generator and have it announce upcoming satellite passes :D

Free geek is such an amazing concept

you could connect a raspberry pi to it, wich creates an image of a digital clock, converts it into the right audio tones and sends them to the SSTV.

Built a SSTV receiver using valves in the 70’s.. 😊 used long persistent CRT…

I think cats have still not forgiven us for moving to flat screen TVs. So many acres of warm to sit on, denied.

This is SO COOL!! I'm only familiar with MMSSTV and I knew about the B/W 8/16 modes but I had no idea what was it all about, the way that the beam creates a giant streak across the screen is so cool!

Cool! This is brand new to me, I'd never heard of SSTV before. I think it'd be pretty easy these days to make a a DIY SSTV receiver without the need for a CRT; just something with a 405nm laser pointer and a galvo pointed at a nice modern strontium titanate screen would do great!

This is seriously cool. Great video as always.

It's a modification of a Tektronix or similiar oscilloscope. Actually, in school, we made circuits to use an oscilloscope as a transistor curve tracer or spectrum analyzer.

This was a great vid as it took me back to my teen years in the 70's. Reading 73 and QST magazines and seeing all this stuff I could never afford. I'm also using MMSSTV and have a blast on 20m SSTV. Maybe see ya there. Keep up the vids!

Would love a free geek tour!

FIFTEEN BUCKS? Dude now you have me hoping to find one!

Gotta love that long-persistence phosphor.

Great video on that ROBOT CRT!

Now hook it up to a shortwave reciever and Tune the reciever to 14.230 mhz and use usb and wait for the pics to roll in.

I didnt expect u to make a sstv vid but Holy balls that is cool

I love it when a new Saveitforparts video drops!!! makes my day

I love free geek what an awesome place to go

The Robot8 format looks to have come about around the same time, and is encoded almost exactly the same as, the first audio computer data formats based on the Kansas City Standard - 1970's and 80's home computers with tape storage used it, the 300 baud V.21 modems use it, and most analog fax machines use it for their low-speed high-compatibility modes. If you've got an old PC with a modem, you could probably try sending a monochrome bitmap image over a 300 b/s dial up signal to send it quite easily.

Speaking of ham radio, I noticed the picture of Arnold Ziffel there!

back in the late 1970s I did SSTV with an oscilloscope and a home brew decoder. The image was captured on 35mm film by leaving the camera shutter open while the image was scanned across the screen. This Robot device looks like an improvement on my set up.

Awesome video!.A very fun introduction to something Id only heard about before.

This is really AWESOME!

Cool device, great video. Thanks

Woa, what a cool find. It's almost steampunk... I could see someone being interested in such a thing for a movie prop.

Great video, it would of been stupid expensive back in the day!

would have been funny if Fluff was sniffing around the unit and touched its nose to one of the input connectors on the back, and a slow-scan picture of Her/Him appeared on the screen, Such a beautiful Kitty ! 😍 too bad they didn't have the robot unit hold the image on the screen as it scanned, instead of scanning and then fading as it went along. but interesting tech none the less!it

Now I'm waiting for some indie developer to make an analogue horror game based on SSTV

👍 Thanks for posting. It was very interesting seeing this. I sometimes operate SSTV. B/W8 is still used occasionally. Typical use would be if you want to quickly send a text message like "QRZ?". B/W8 or B/W12 is ideal because it takes only 8 or 12 seconds to send a simple image (Martin 2 mode would take 58 seconds to send the image). If anyone is interested, the MMSSTV software can be down loaded free. If you connect your radio receiver audio our to your computer audio in, you are good to receive SSTV. Just listen on 14.230MHz during daylight and you should be able to receive some images

Yes, show free geek. I love old stuff.

I had Robot 70 (monitor) & 80 (camera) SSTV system back in the 80's and later I ended up with a ROBOT 400 SSTV converter..

Awesome stuff 👏

ISS uses PD120 Mode because it takes 120 seconds for VGA picture. There is a pause of another 120 seconds. If you're lucky you can capture 3 pictures becaus the passthrough is approx 12 Minutes in best case

Great reuse of oscilloscope components. Cool stuff.

That is very cool Thank you 🙏 for sharing

and i bet sam over at "look mum no computer" would dig this!

This is awesome.

Aw man, while I don't miss the weather of the Midwest, I do wish that the South had been a little more technically literate so we would have had surplus stores like that.

I love this Retro stuff, it's very cool indeed 😎 👍

Great video, I was always curious about SSTV ever since I was 14 and started getting Practical WIreless, in the mid 80s. This had a TV DX feature which showed impressive "normal" broadcast DX from overseas and even some error-free teletext pages, along with blurry SSTV pictures which were probably from a long persistence CRT like this one. I believe Robot8 is still used for meteor scatter contacts due to the short time needed to send a picture. I am a UK amateur operator but currently only have a Baofeng, so am considering the MMSSTV and Robot36 app approach on 2m as a first step. 73 de M0JiV

That thing is super cool man~! I've always been facinated with SSTV and try to ctach the ISS and other ham sats sending it out. Enjoy that thing~!

you can use it as a really unique slideshow player.

Great ! what about taking a photo with a long exposure time to get (and show us) a complete picture !?

Fantastic

thank you for the video

great video

Fluff = Whiskers for dayyyysssss... 😸😸😸

So cool

I love your kitty!

My that's neat! Question: How hard would it be to get more modern formats to work on there, like Robot-32? Could you maybe hook up the CRT to a raspberry pi or something & have that do the decoding? Also, What would happen if you tried to input some Robot-32 signals into it? Once again, Cool video as always!

Free geek is awesome

The cat approves 😂

I'm not sure what you could do with it but it would probably make a pretty good museum exhibit. I used to volunteer at the radio communication museum of Great Britain and as much intereresting stuff as they have there I don't think they have anything like this

Thanks for Show it ❤❤❤ great

Very cool video. You should get your ham radio technician class license. It'll open up a whole other world for you - transmission. Your stuff is very entertaining. I appreciate your affinity for alittle bit of everything electronic and you approach it with a budget prospective. It's really easy to go and buy new things that just work. It takes a genius to do the things you consistently do on your change. We no longer know how to fix this as a society. Throw away tech. It's no wonder the Chinese rule world export and lead in electronics. Keep up the good work.