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Evoke 2025 @enfys@wetdry.worldRE: https://wetdry.world/@enfys/113968670614531724
Quite a few of you are wondering how Fedi via Teletext/FediText/Teletextodon works, so here goes:
It's running off of a Raspberry Pi with composite video output. Every 30-60 seconds I use Mastodon.py to grab the most recent toot on my timeline, the only data I need from this is the author, content and time it was posted.
The actual toot text content I get back is HTML so I remove the tags so it's just text and have to sanitize the content for any characters that are not supported.
I then use this data to construct a teletext page (TTI format), I wrap the text to a maximum of 38 characters per line (it would be 40 but there is room for control characters at the start for colour and double height), using double height text as default and if the toot is longer than what I can fit onto the display then it swaps to doing single height characters instead.
The final page is then thrown into a teletext signal injector, which then I can view on my TV by pressing the teletext button on my remote control. :3
Sadly no support for any user input or images yet, it's mostly just a fun gimmick.
@enfys You got me to think of another project. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/would-it-be-able-to-read-a-fed-KnFbGkUxTFKaAH5AWZfmRA#1 Imagine listening to your timeline via DAB broadcasts.
@enfys
does teletex work over composite? TIL
@tthbaltazar @enfys If I remember correctly, I believe the teletext data is just stuffed into a blanking interval or something like that? So from a transmission perspective it's just 'image data' that happens to not be visible
@tthbaltazar @enfys I think this more had to do with the specific devices involved.
I remember how back in the day we were running our TV signal through the VCR so that it could record stuff, and on the first VCR we didn't have Teletext on the TV (presumably it wasn't forwarding the blanking interval data, assuming it to be empty?) but on the VCR we got later it suddenly worked because it was presumably Teletext-aware
Teletext works on the blanking interval of the PAL signal, so yes it does!