Schlagwort: vinyl

  • Who needs vinyl records when you’ve got Raspberry Pi and NFC?

    Who needs vinyl records when you’ve got Raspberry Pi and NFC?

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Redditor Mark Hank missed the tactile experience of vinyl records so he removed the insides of an old Sonos Boost to turn it into a Raspberry Pi- and NFC-powered music player. Yes, this really works:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N02-eF822dY]

    The Sonos Boost was purchased for just £3 on eBay. Mark pulled all the original insides out of it and repurposed it as what they call a ‘vinyl emulator’ to better replicate the experience of playing records than what a simple touchscreen offers.

    The Boost now contains a Raspberry Pi 3A+ and an ACR122U NFC reader, and it plays a specific album, playlist, or radio station when you tap a specific NFC tag on it. It’s teamed with Sonos speakers, and NTAG213 NFC tags. The maker recommends you go with the largest tags you can find, as it will improve read performance; they went with these massive ones.

    One of the album covers printed onto thick card

    The tags are inside printouts mounted on 1mm thick card (those album cover artwork squares getting chucked at the Sonos in the video), and they’re “super cheap” according to the maker.

    You’ll need to install the node-sonos-http-api package on your Raspberry Pi; it’s the basis of the whole back-end of the project. The maker provides full instructions on their original post, including on how to get Spotify up and running on your Raspberry Pi.

    The whole setup neatened up

    Rather than manually typing HTTP requests into a web browser, the maker wanted to automate the process so that the Raspberry Pi does it when presented with certain stimulus (aka when the NFC reader is triggered). They also walk you through this process in their step-by-step instructions.

    How the maker hid the mess under the display table

    The entire build cost around £50, and the great thing is that it doesn’t need to sit inside an old Sonos Boost if you don’t want it to. The reader works through modest-width wood, so you can mount it under a counter, install it in a ‘now listening’ stand, whatever — it’s really up to you.

    Full instructions are available on hackster.io! And here’s all the code you’ll need, handily stored on GitHub.

    Website: LINK

  • Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Use album artwork to trigger playback of your favourite music with Plynth, the Raspberry Pi–powered, camera-enhanced record stand.

    Plynth Demo

    This is “Plynth Demo” by Plynth on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

    Record playback with Plynth

    Plynth uses a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera Module to identify cover artwork and play the respective album on your sound system, via your preferred streaming service or digital library.

    As the project’s website explains, using Plynth is pretty simple. Just:

    • Place a n LP, CD, tape, VHS, DVD, piece of artwork – anything, really – onto Plynth
    • Plynth uses its built-in camera to scan and identify the work
    • Plynth starts streaming your music on your connected speakers or home stereo system

    As for Plynth’s innards? The stand houses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Camera Module, and relies on “a combination of the Google Vision API and OpenCV, which is great because there’s a lot of documentation online for both of them”, states the project creator, sp_cecamp, on Reddit.

    Other uses

    Some of you may wonder why you wouldn’t have your records with your record player and, as such, use that record player to play those records. If you are one of these people, then consider, for example, the beautiful Damien Rice LP I own that tragically broke during a recent house move. While I can no longer play the LP, its artwork is still worthy of a place on my record shelf, and with Plynth I can still play the album as well.

    In addition, instead of album artwork to play an album, you could use photographs, doodles, or type to play curated playlists, or, as mentioned on the website, DVDs to play the movies soundtrack, or CDs to correctly select the right disc in a disc changer.

    Convinced or not, I think what we can all agree on is that Plynth is a good-looking bit of kit, and at Pi Towers look forward to seeing where they project leads.

    Website: LINK

  • Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Use album artwork to trigger playback of your favourite music with Plynth, the Raspberry Pi–powered, camera-enhanced record stand.

    Plynth Demo

    This is “Plynth Demo” by Plynth on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

    Record playback with Plynth

    Plynth uses a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera Module to identify cover artwork and play the respective album on your sound system, via your preferred streaming service or digital library.

    As the project’s website explains, using Plynth is pretty simple. Just:

    • Place a n LP, CD, tape, VHS, DVD, piece of artwork – anything, really – onto Plynth
    • Plynth uses its built-in camera to scan and identify the work
    • Plynth starts streaming your music on your connected speakers or home stereo system

    As for Plynth’s innards? The stand houses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Camera Module, and relies on “a combination of the Google Vision API and OpenCV, which is great because there’s a lot of documentation online for both of them”, states the project creator, sp_cecamp, on Reddit.

    Other uses

    Some of you may wonder why you wouldn’t have your records with your record player and, as such, use that record player to play those records. If you are one of these people, then consider, for example, the beautiful Damien Rice LP I own that tragically broke during a recent house move. While I can no longer play the LP, its artwork is still worthy of a place on my record shelf, and with Plynth I can still play the album as well.

    In addition, instead of album artwork to play an album, you could use photographs, doodles, or type to play curated playlists, or, as mentioned on the website, DVDs to play the movies soundtrack, or CDs to correctly select the right disc in a disc changer.

    Convinced or not, I think what we can all agree on is that Plynth is a good-looking bit of kit, and at Pi Towers look forward to seeing where they project leads.

    Website: LINK

  • Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Playback your favourite records with Plynth

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Use album artwork to trigger playback of your favourite music with Plynth, the Raspberry Pi–powered, camera-enhanced record stand.

    Plynth Demo

    This is “Plynth Demo” by Plynth on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

    Record playback with Plynth

    Plynth uses a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera Module to identify cover artwork and play the respective album on your sound system, via your preferred streaming service or digital library.

    As the project’s website explains, using Plynth is pretty simple. Just:

    • Place a n LP, CD, tape, VHS, DVD, piece of artwork – anything, really – onto Plynth
    • Plynth uses its built-in camera to scan and identify the work
    • Plynth starts streaming your music on your connected speakers or home stereo system

    As for Plynth’s innards? The stand houses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Camera Module, and relies on “a combination of the Google Vision API and OpenCV, which is great because there’s a lot of documentation online for both of them”, states the project creator, sp_cecamp, on Reddit.

    Other uses

    Some of you may wonder why you wouldn’t have your records with your record player and, as such, use that record player to play those records. If you are one of these people, then consider, for example, the beautiful Damien Rice LP I own that tragically broke during a recent house move. While I can no longer play the LP, its artwork is still worthy of a place on my record shelf, and with Plynth I can still play the album as well.

    In addition, instead of album artwork to play an album, you could use photographs, doodles, or type to play curated playlists, or, as mentioned on the website, DVDs to play the movies soundtrack, or CDs to correctly select the right disc in a disc changer.

    Convinced or not, I think what we can all agree on is that Plynth is a good-looking bit of kit, and at Pi Towers look forward to seeing where they project leads.

    Website: LINK

  • Watching VinylVideo with a Raspberry Pi A+

    Watching VinylVideo with a Raspberry Pi A+

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Play back video and sound on your television using your turntable and the VinylVideo converter, as demonstrated by YouTuber TechMoan.

    VinylVideo – Playing video from a 45rpm record

    With a VinylVideo convertor you can play video from a vinyl record played on a standard record player. Curiosity, tech-demo or art?

    A brief history of VinylVideo

    When demand for vinyl dipped in the early nineties, Austrian artist Gebhard Sengmüller introduced the world to his latest creation: VinylVideo. With VinylVideo you can play audio and visuals from an LP vinyl record using a standard turntable and a converter box plugged into a television set.

    Gebhard Sengmüller original VinylVideo

    While the project saw some interest throughout the nineties and early noughties, in the end only 20 conversion sets were ever produced.

    However, when fellow YouTuber Randy Riddle (great name) got in touch with UK-based tech enthusiast TechMoan to tell him about a VinylVideo revival device becoming available, TechMoan had no choice but to invest.

    Where the Pi comes in

    After getting the VinylVideo converter box to work with an old Sony CRT unit, TechMoan decided to take apart the box to better understand how it works

    You’ll notice a familiar logo at the top right there. Yes, it’s using a Raspberry Pi, a model A+ to be precise, to do the video decoding and output. It makes sense in a low-volume operation — use something that’s ready-made rather than getting a custom-made board done that you probably have to buy in batches of a thousand from China.

    There’s very little else inside the sturdy steel casing, but what TechMoan’s investigation shows is that the Pi is connected to a custom-made phono preamp via USB and runs software written specifically for the VinylVideo conversion and playback.

    Using Raspberry Pi for VinylVideo playback

    For more information on the original project, visit the extremely dated VinylVideo website. And for more on the new product, you can visit the revival converter’s website.

    Be sure to subscribe to TechMoan’s YouTube channel for more videos, and see how you can support him on Patreon.

    And a huge thank you to David Ferguson for the heads-up! You can watch David talk about his own Raspberry Pi project, PiBakery, on our YouTube channel.

    Website: LINK