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[on:]

Hi guys,

I'm an industrial design student in Umea, Sweden, and this is a working prototype of my degree project. I've been working on this for a while. It's basically a Spotify box. I can link different RFID tags to Spotify links or searches, so you can have your own physical collection of playlists and music.

The two small buttons skip to the previos/next track, the big knob controls the volume and the RFID tags are placed on it. There's a small magnet in the knob and a metallic part in the RFID tags, so they stick to it without falling.

The sketch uses AppleScript to control Spotify: it opens a Spotify link or performs a search and uses the keyboard shortcuts to control what's playing. It's still a work in progress, the three led matrix will be used to display battery status, track info, maybe it will display the time when it's not in use… There're still a few things to decide.

I'm planning on working on the UI for tagging music too, so the RFID id's and the spotify links can be stored in a xml file locally, this way the processing side of the prototype can access the xml to play whatever is assigned to each tag. Right now, I've to assign music manually within the Processing sketch.

I'll upload all the code once I'm done with it, I'll be presenting everything in one month and I still have a lot of stuff to finish, so by then I'll hopefully be able to share some drawings of how it's build to let others build their own.

So far, this is what I've got:








I'm keeping a project log here: http://blog.zenona.com
and a flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/parrita/sets/72157625436664189/

Enjoy!
Merry christmas!!

[Reply #1 on:]

Well done.  That's a gorgeous project.  I love the design of the case.

[Reply #2 on:]

Nice project. I'm personnaly working on something almost similar but with a graphical LCD to display informations and without RFID tags.
I'm also trying to launch an open source project of wireless network for Spotify, you can find more informations there : http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1293031993

Contact me if you are interested in this project.

[Reply #3 on:]

Thanks Adrian.

Polochon, I think it would be a good idea too, but I'm afraid I don't know how to help out with the project. I'm designer and I use Arduino just for prototyping design proposals. I don't think my skills are good enough to work on a protocol. What's the status of the project right now? Do you have any github or google code site started? It'd be great to follow what comes next.

Besides that, I think the simplest and more accessible way at the moment is some kind of FM transmitter receiver. They're fairly cheap, there's no software side or need to setup anything… just plug it in and it's good to go. But I know, the sound quality isn't great.

My starting point was working on something like this to avoid the need of a computer/phone for listening to Spotify. For the prototype I need one (I can't run Spotify in the Arduino itself), I just want to show the feel of using it. A device like this could be connected to the stereo system and controlled from the phone too…

Anyways, I'd love to follow up on your project. It sounds interesting and I might be able to help somehow!

Cheers,