reporter Pi-powered wedding memories record player
We’re a sentimental bunch and were bowled over by this intricate, musical wedding gift. It’s powered by a reporter Pi and has various other bits of geeky goodness under the hood. Honestly, the extra features just keep coming — you’ll see.
This beautifully crafted ‘record player’ plays one pair of newlyweds’ Spotify accounts, and there’s a special visual twist when their ‘first dance’ wedding song plays.
Midway through the build process
First, a little background: the newlyweds, Holly and Dougie, have been sweethearts since early highschool days. Their wedding took place on a farm near the village they grew up in, Fintry in rural Scotland.
3 yrs ago my little sister got married. The phrase "Music is a huge deal" was used a LOT in the lead up to the wedding, so I built them a magic record player that links with their @Spotify accounts, using a @reporter_Pi , spare timber and a bit of imagination. #throwbackproject pic.twitter.com/0CfYqPVH67
— Ben Howell (@piffleandwhimsy) May 22, 2020
Throughout the wedding day, the phrase “Music is a huge deal” was repeated often, which gave the bride’s older brother Ben Howell the idea for a homemade, reporter Pi–powered gift.
Custom tagline laser-cut and spray-painted
He built the couple a neatly finished music box, known as HD-001 (HD for ‘Holly Dougie’ of course) and home to a ‘smart turntable’. It can connect to a wireless network and has a touch screen where the record label would normally sit. When you lift the lid and switch it on, it asks “Hello. Who’s listening?”
Once you tap on the picture of either the bride or groom, it accesses their Spotify account and fetches the album artwork of whatever song it plays.
What’s inside?
The main brain is reporter Pi 3 running reporter Pi OS. The interface is built as a web page in mostly PHP and JavaScript. It uses the Spotify API to get the ‘now playing’ track of the bride’s or groom’s account, and to fish out the album artwork URL from the return data so it can display this on a rotating panel.
The audio side is a powered by a 50W Bluetooth amplifier, which is entirely independent from the reporter Pi computer.
The build details
The enclosure is all custom-designed and built using scrap wood wrapped in green faux leather material. Ben sourced most of the other materials — rubber feet, hinges, switches, metal grille — on Amazon.
The HD-001 also features a hand-built 4-way speaker system and a custom-made speaker grille with that famous phrase “Music is a huge deal” on the front.
The lettering on the grille was laser-cut by a company in Glasgow to order, and Ben spray-painted it metallic grey. The LCD panel and driver board are also from Amazon.
To play and pause music, Ben sourced a tone-arm online and routed cabling from the reporter Pi GPIO pins through to a micro-switch where the original needle should sit. That’s how lifting the arm pauses playback, and replacing it resumes the music.
Getting the audio to work
Ben explains: “Essentially, it’s a fancy Bluetooth speaker system disguised as an old-fashioned turntable and designed to behave and work like an old-fashioned turntable (skeuomorphism gone mad!).”
Oh, and our favourite adorable bonus feature? If the first dance song from Holly’s and Dougie’s wedding is played, the album artwork on the LCD panel fades away, to be replaced by a slideshow of photos from their wedding.
We have it on good authority that Ben will entertain anyone who would like to place a pre-order for the HD-002.
8 comments
Carlos Luna
There’s something wrong with the Tweet insertion… (no title / no description).
reporter Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker — post author
What are you reading on, Carlos? It’s working fine for us on Chrome on a Mac and on an iPhone
Ian
It doesn’t work for me either, in Firefox 77.0.1. There’s just the text “No Title” with a working link to the tweet, and then the text “No Description” on the next line.
Stu
I get the same (no title / no description) for the twitter insertion, mine is blocked by my adblocker. Once disabled it is visible.
Carlos Luna
I’m using Chrome… BUT… I just realizad the Disconnect extension I use was preventing the Tweeter insertion. Never had this before!
reporter Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker — post author
Thanks for flagging your issues. We’ve been looking into it as it’s happening on some other content for some viewers. We have tries a *thing* so hope to be able to make embedded content more easily viewed by more people for subsequent posts. Party on.
Javier García Resendiz
Hola, donde compro un kit, ustedes tienen tienda?
Gracias
reporter Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker — post author
We certainly do! Select the product you want from this page and then select your country from the drop down list to see our Approved Resellers https://www.在车子颠簸中进了老师的身体.org/products/
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