This is an offshoot not only of the jukebox project, but some little things I’ve been automating at work as of late. Nothing here is groundbreaking, but it wasn’t obvious to me when I started using copilot. During my first attempts, I just added copilot my normal process of knocking something together: Jump in and start experimenting with things, write some comments and notes and gradually build up a working thing piece by piece. Copilot was helpful, but kept running ahead of me, doing things I didn’t ask it to do, which was annoying.
I really started to see more benefits once I started working in a slightly different, and possibly more obvious, way. In brief:
The jukebox project continues despite the lack of an actual jukebox…
Cataloging and Displaying the Tracks
First up, there needed to be a way of assigning tracks to buttons. Manually doing this was exciting for the first track, but that excitement waned exponentially by the 3rd or 4th track. I created an indexing script that tears through the whole music collection to make those button assignments in milliseconds.
Title strips in the Star Title Strip Co. style.
With that data entry burden lifted, I moved on to making title cards. The first thing I did on this project was the card design. It was really satisfying, to use that design for something physical. I created yet another script that populates the artist and title from the aforementioned indexing script and spits out a PDF. I’m really happy with the way these came out. They deliver on the original vision without me having to copy and paste the information for each and every card—or purchase a typewriter.
Mucking around with scripts and audio files is interesting, but this project is about having a physical jukebox with buttons and title cards under the warm glow of incandescent bulbs.
From the beginning, I’ve thought of using a Seeburg Wall-o-matic. Specifically, the 3WA model for it’s 200 track capacity. I thought I’d just get one that no longer works on eBay and wire up the buttons. What could go wrong with that plan?
I dug a little deeper and found this excellent write up and video of a project exactly like mine. Before watching those videos, I had no idea what was inside those wall-o-matics. Long story short, it’s all electromagnetic (not surprising given the vintage). The button pushes trigger a rotor that fires pulses down a communication wire to the main jukebox to queue the songs.
That means my “just wire up the buttons” plan probably won’t work without destroying the existing mechanism, which I want to avoid. Luckily, the project linked above includes schematics for a Raspberry Pi hat that decodes the pulses. For now, I plan on doing that, but I really need to have the Seeburg hardware before I can proceed. I’ll look to purchase one in the new year.
Some progress has been made since the last post about the jukebox project. To properly set expectations, if you read jukebox and thought Cool! This guy resurrected an old jukebox found on trash night with the expectation of seeing pictures of wires, solder and electromagnetic components, you might want to keep moving. The progress thus far has been all software and there are no cool making photos or videos to be had, yet.
However, if you want to read about some starts and stops on getting a simple music server running, stick around…
This project has been on my list for a few months. Basically, I want a sort of traditional jukebox at home so guests can play music. Not any old music from Spotify or Amazon or Apple or other streaming service. Only tracks I’ve painstakingly curated from my personal collection—just like an old jukebox.
Today, things kicked off with the most critical part of the entire project. Before getting into today’s work, I’ll offer up a brief explanation of what I’m shooting for…
This is the final update on the Rheingold beer sign project (originally covered here: A beer light to guide us).
Rather than do anything drastic, I opted to retrofit the sign with LEDs and call it a day. A new cord with a polarized plug was also fitted and all the sockets were wired properly. There was a fair bit of corrosion under some of the original wire nuts, so I’m glad to have nice, clean connections now. That also serves as a reminder to inspect the connections on these old signs.
There’s a photo of the finished job below. I left a note on the inside for the curious person that pops this open in the future. Maybe they’ll decide to restore this sign to its original glory. Until then, I’m enjoying the warm, constant glow.
