Erik Dorthé

An NFC Stereo Component

A Modern Problem

For a long time now, I have been concerned about the accessibility of music to my children. When I was young, I could explore the physicality of my parents’ vinyl records or tape cassettes. I could, at the worst, turn the dial on the radio and see what was on. Today, kids seem to only have the option of asking an adult to find music on their phone. While I have always been free with that access, they do not have any real way to explore. They can only ask for things they know, which tends to mean “kids’ music”. Now, I am fine with a bit of Raffi and Baby Shark here and there, but this feels like a case of letting society parent for me. My kids know kids’ music because it is what is fed to them around our culture as appropriate.

I explored a few options to give them more freedom. I thought about getting a CD player, but my options seem to be low-quality and cheap or audiophile expensive. And how hard would it be to get CDs of the albums I want? The more I thought about it, the more I expected my 3 year old to destroy my expensive CD player and painstakingly collected CDs. I got a Homepod Mini from Apple, but it didn’t help with exploration. Instead of asking me for music from the phone, they were asking Siri. I played with various options to make a music player with a screen to select from, but it felt too impersonal and constrained. It might have all the music in the world, but you would have no sense of the depth from the outside, no incentive to explore.

A Modern Solution

I do not remember how the idea came to me. Maybe I had inspiration from various products on the market, or maybe it was obvious enough that I started down this route on my own, but I started to think of building an RFID based music player. Ultimately, I was feeling overwhelmed at the time, and did not get around to it. We got a Toniebox, and this sufficed for a little while. But I was still bothered by the lack of accessibility. And worse, I was getting frustrated with my own relationship to music on my phone. As with all modern applications of smart phones, I felt like I was driven to distraction every time I picked it up. And I also wished for some better visual and tactile cues for music selection.

I approached the idea again this year, and found a mature looking project that did most of the software integration for me. That was enough of a start to set me to work. I ordered a Raspberry Pi 4 (the Raspberry Pi 5 does not have a built in audio interface) and an RFID hat for it. I then started designing the physical system. I got going in my CAD software to put together a housing, and then picked out an audio port and USB-C extension so I could have clean ports on the back. I designed an easily 3D printable frame to integrate album art (printed on standard paper) with an RFID sticker. When all is said and done, I am very happy with the results.

Implementation

BoM

Parts I used are linked, but may not be updated.

Hardware

Printed parts

Software

Build

This might not be perfectly complete. I am going to outline what I did, but I didn’t exactly document it as I went along. If you follow these directions and have a problem, feel free to reach out and I’ll see if I can help.

Configuration

Phoniebox has a lot of configuration options. They can mostly be modified under the Settings menu of the web interface. For me, there are a few important ones.

[Skip]
enabled: True
Type: Button
Pin: 17
pull_up_down: pull_up
functionCall: functionCallPlayerNext

Albums

Results

Within a week, my 3 year old was picking music with glee. He has not asked for any “kids music” since I put the player in place. Both kids are excited whenever they see that I have “printed” new albums. I would call this a resounding success.

I have been using the stereo for close to a year now. I know that true audiofiles would tell me that the audio quality on the Raspberry Pi 4 is terrible, but my living room is not a quiet space with good acoustics. In my home, with my little t-amp and bookshelf speakers, the sound is totally fine. My biggest problem is figuring out where to put all the little albums I want to make!

I could probably improve audio quality. A small USB DAC like a Dragonfly could probably fit in the case with no modification. I could certainly upgrade my amp and speakers. But I haven not felt the need. It sounds good enough for my purposes.

What has surprised me the most is how often I use the radio stations I loaded in. Easy access to streaming radio stations from around the world with easy access has given me a lot of options for things to listen to when I am not inspired to pick a particular album.

I have also been prompted to find more new music that I like. My paper template for printing album art fits 6 albums on a page. I have generally committed to always making at least one of them an album made within the last year, the more recent the better. It has kept me from wallowing in nostalgia and becoming stagnant in my appreciation of music.

Best of all, it did exactly what I wanted it to. I can put on music without looking at a screen. I can recommend music to my kids in a way they can understand. And I don’t worry about my music being a collectors item or a fragile showpiece.

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