Playback your favourite records with Plynth
Use album artwork to trigger playback of your favourite music with Plynth, the Raspberry Pi–powered, camera-enhanced record stand.
Record playback with Plynth
Plynth uses a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera Module to identify cover artwork and play the respective album on your sound system, via your preferred streaming service or digital library.
As the project’s website explains, using Plynth is pretty simple. Just:
- Place a n LP, CD, tape, VHS, DVD, piece of artwork – anything, really – onto Plynth
- Plynth uses its built-in camera to scan and identify the work
- Plynth starts streaming your music on your connected speakers or home stereo system
As for Plynth’s innards? The stand houses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and Camera Module, and relies on “a combination of the Google Vision API and OpenCV, which is great because there’s a lot of documentation online for both of them”, states the project creator, Jono Matusky, on Reddit.
Other uses
Some of you may wonder why you wouldn’t have your records with your record player and, as such, use that record player to play those records. If you are one of these people, then consider, for example, the beautiful Damien Rice LP I own that tragically broke during a recent house move. While I can no longer play the LP, its artwork is still worthy of a place on my record shelf, and with Plynth I can still play the album as well.
In addition, instead of album artwork to play an album, you could use photographs, doodles, or type to play curated playlists, or, as mentioned on the website, DVDs to play the movies soundtrack, or CDs to correctly select the right disc in a disc changer.
Convinced or not, I think what we can all agree on is that Plynth is a good-looking bit of kit, and at Pi Towers look forward to seeing where they project leads.
1 comment
Thomas Cott
The thing that made come back from simply scanning the article to reading it completely was that specific album, which I own. I never thought that I would bump into anyone who actually owned another copy. When I was into stereo, I went the integrated receiver, middle to upper range semi-automatic turn-table, the 10 band Audio Control C-101 Octave Equalizer, a 1 BX expander/compressor, Large Advent utility speakers, Sennheiser headphones ( I sold them to my sister and she called them “A head vice” because of the squeezing properties) . The only reason why I’m not using them now is because the volume pot went south and I can’t find authentic replacement parts. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Cheers.
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