Taking part in report covers as an alternative of the vinyl

In 2020, for the primary time for the reason that ’80s, vinyl information outsold CDs. Digital music — notably streaming — outpaced each by a large margin, however the reputation of vinyl information elevated whereas the recognition of CDs decreased. That’s as a result of the analog sound of vinyl provides a dimension that many discover pleasing and since there’s something interesting in regards to the tangible act of placing on a report. In a enjoyable twist, college students at LDLC College in France got here up with a brand new method to put a report on: by inserting the report cowl as an alternative of the vinyl.

College students Ibrahima, Scott, Antoine and Arthur got here throughout an outdated Arduino challenge that their instructor, Jean Noël, created years in the past. He transformed a “slot-in” report participant to just accept report sleeves as an alternative of vinyl. However it will nonetheless play the proper music, because of RFID. An RFID tag on the report sleeve would set off an Arduino contained in the report participant to queue up the proper playlist on an SD card. The Arduino would then play the music by means of an Adafruit Music Maker MP3 defend linked to a 7W mono amplifier.

In line with Hackaday’s Hack it Again contest, the scholars determined to revive their instructor’s challenge. Whereas the overall idea and far of the {hardware} remained, the scholars made just a few enhancements. They added an RGB LCD show that exhibits details about the present music and in addition rewrote the Arduino sketch to make it simpler to replace playlists with out reflashing the Uno. In the event that they win the Hackaday contest, the scholar staff plans to develop a {hardware} equipment that can make it simple for others to deal with related RFID music tasks.