Inspiration
We noticed some of our older family members were hesitant toward music streaming and might be more comfortable using technology they are more familiar with.
What it does
Spinify is the ultimate blend of retro and modern music technology. While it looks and functions like a classic record player, it makes use of Spotify’s API to bring you the best of both analog and digital worlds. Simply place a record on the turntable, and Spinify will recognize the record and start streaming the corresponding song, album or playlist from Spotify instantly. It alleviates the hassle of searching for tracks online and provides an authentic, tactile experience of playing records, combined with the convenience and vast library of Spotify of over 100 million songs.
How we built it
Spinfiy identifies which record is placed on the turntable using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that assign a unique identifier to each record. The data is sent to a Raspberry Pi 4B, which connects to Spotify's API to stream the music to a speaker. An Arduino Nano handles I/O to and from the periphery: play/pause from lowering the needle, buttons to skip tracks, a volume dial, an LED display to present detailed song information, a DC motor to control the rotation of the turntable, and a general on/off switch.
The box and records were found at a thrift store, and some machining using drills and saws was done to create holes.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges we faced was being able to communicate between the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino Nano. We opted to use two boards since the Pi was better suited towards interfacing with the API and speaker, while the Nano could read multiple sensors and analog inputs. This was a particularly hard challenge because not only did it require efficient communication protocols between boards, but also between team members.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of the attention to detail we had in our design, focusing on the little things that really brought our design to a more clean and finished look. We are proud of the skeuomorphic design elements we were able to incorporate in a build that fused modern and historic methods of music.
What we learned
We learned how to work with Spotify's api, communication between Raspberry Pi and Arduino through the use of serial communication ports without conflicts in reads and writes. But most importantly we got a better sense of the aspects of debugging that always take much longer than anticipated. By working on this project, we got the ability to improve our communication skills and technical skills as we debugged many separate systems during integration of all the sub components.
What's next for Spinify
Many ideas to improve Spinify were proposed over the course of its construction. Firstly, a small LED screen was thought to display the album art of the song, but the idea was scrapped due to time constraints. Similarly, there was an idea to use an 8x8 LED matrix as a music visualizer. In terms of goals beyond new features, the team would like to explore manufacturing it as a novelty gift!
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