Spotify Player is the work of Jordi Parra and his degree project: a device to listen to Spotify at home.
In a nutshell the objects consists of Processing sketch, Arduino and an RFID reader. Each RFID tag can be assigned to a Spotify link, album, artist or search. When the tag is placed on the reader, an ID-12, it sends a trigger to Processing and triggers an AppleScript that will take over Spotify and play whatever is linked to that tag. The processing sketch can also retrieve the information about the track that is being played. For doing so, a packet sniffer is checking all the internet packets sent from the computer and whenever it finds something being sent to Last.fm, it grabs it and parses the track information (artist, album, title and length).
The two small buttons on the bottom left of the device skip to the previous and next track in the queue. The big know is the volume, and the magnets are place on top of it. The knob has a magnet so the RFID tags stick to it.
The object also includes three LED matrices, a total of 192 LED’s, to display information under the pattern of the speaker. In the video below you can see the LED’s turning on individually. It is just testing them to see if everything is working, but eventually they will be used to display battery levels, internet connection problems, premium subscription days left and other information.
The project is now 99% complete. Read more about the detailed making process on Jordi’s blog.
(thanks Emilio)
