Tag: makethings

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Photo of a number table tent on a wooden table. The number is "86".

On my Birthday, we got 86ed from some place in Park Slope (see photo). The woman behind the counter wasn’t all that impressed by my attempt at humor after she handed over this number. Perhaps she’s tired of the not so original reference, or maybe she thought it was some sort of middle-aged 67.

I did up a very quick app (I’m using the term very loosely here). Thanks to generative AI, I spent less time on this digital version than on laying out the printable version I was using before. It’s just a little tracker to help me stay on the right dietary path using the DASH diet (from the days before the government added beef tallow to its recommendations). After using it for a week, I made a couple tweaks and am pretty happy with it. You can check it out here: Simple DASH Diet Tracker, if you’re interested in such things, the code is on Codeberg.

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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:

  • Start by writein brief requirements
  • Use Copilot instructions files
  • Use new chats from time to time
  • Try different models

Keep reading for the longer version…

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Photo of a green moving truck parked on a Brooklyn street with the text "Otter Moving & Storage" and an animated Otter carrying a cardboard box.
Don’t otters crack things open on rocks?

Another relatively quite week around here allowed time to continue some projects. I reached a good stopping point on the jukebox project while waiting for the required hardware. The software, complete with a serviceable web UI, is done (for now). I loaded up 200 tracks and meant to press it into service for New Year’s Eve. However, on the night, I was too lazy to connect it to the Hi-Fi. I’m sure they’ll be another opportunity to test it soon though.

In the meantime, I moved onto another project I mentioned here almost a year ago. Embarrassingly, I did little with since. One of the many things on the todo list is to reliably source real time subway data. This MTAPI project should be better than what I had done previously. I added the service alert data to it and I hope the project owner pulls in my changes soon. That will allow me to swap out my old data source for this one.

Between the projects, a bit of socializing, some good food & drink and an excellent Friday evening jam, it was a great start for the new year. Until…

After just three days, my hopes of this year being less interesting have been dashed. The actions of the current administration in Venezuela fly in the face of international law, have killed innocent people and put us all on a path of uncertainty. Per usual, Heather Cox Richardson provides some good context.

We are living in interesting times, indeed.

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Photo of a sheet of jukebox title strips designed in a classic, star title strip style. Various artists and titles are visible such as "The Dave Brubeck Quartet" and "The Smiths".

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.

Photo of a pile of jukebox title cards wit various artists and titles such at "The Police", "New Order" and "The Clash".
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.

If you’re interested in the code behind these things, head over my jukebox project on Codeberg.

What about the jukebox?

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.

Until then, stay tuned for more digital fun!!!

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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…

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