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Discovering new music is difficult, making it a frustrating experience for both listeners and services. Identifying what one person liked about a specific song is a challenge when music is so subjective. Two different people may love the same song, but for different reasons that affect their wider tastes. In an attempt to improve the situation, Danning Liang and Artem Laptiev from MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning built a kind of AI-powered boombox called VBox that helps listeners discover music in a new way.

Most existing services use some combination of listener data and qualitative categorization of songs to aid in music discovery. But those connections are obvious and tend not to identify the factors that actually predict a listener’s enjoyment of a song. Artificial intelligence models, on the other hand, excel at finding connections and patterns that we might not see ourselves. In this case, VBox uses OpenAI’s natural language models to categorize music and find similar songs. As a song plays, VBox will list keywords related to the music. If a specific keyword resonates with the listener, they can select it to influence the next song choice.

There aren’t a lot of technical details available, but we do know that an Arduino board is somewhere in the mix. It uses RFID to identify genre cards that start the music discovery process. The keywords scroll across a LED matrix display and a crank handle attached to a rotary encoder lets listeners move through the keyword list. The enclosure is made of gorgeous stamped sheet metal with a leather strap and some 3D-printed internal framework for the electronic components. Music pumps out through a pair of small speakers.

This is more of an art project and an AI experiment than a true attempt at creating an appealing music discovery system, but the idea is novel and it very well could prove useful for some music lovers.

The post VBox is like an AI-powered Pandora boombox appeared first on Arduino Blog.

While ’80s-style boomboxes have their own unique character, per hacker “Dancorp’s” excellent mod, it’s clear that they could be improved dramatically with programmable LEDs.

This build uses a capacitive filtering arrangement to feed line out signals from the boombox into an Arduino Uno, which then controls three LED strips.

Two of these strips are arranged around the speaker cones, emitting beautiful LED effects to go along with the music playing, while the third can be used to light up the built-in VU meters.

A schematic along with Arduino code are available on Dancorp’s write-up. It looks like a fairly accessible project, especially given the extra space available in electronics from that era.

Old boomboxes make great hacks. Their design is iconic; yes they look dated but that really just builds on the nostalgic urge to have one hanging around. Plus their big cases simply invite adding things inside in a way impossible with contemporary electronics.

[Danc0rp] hacked his JVC M70 boombox to make the speakers glow with animated light, bumping VU meters, and a pulsing horizontal bar above the tape deck. The effect is superb. The cones of the speakers act like a projection surface and the grilles hide the LEDs until they activate, and enhance the effects once unleashed. It is one of the best LED speaker hacks we’ve ever seen.

Custom board with Arduino UNO
Custom board with Arduino UNO

The light effects are provided by LED strips, which for the speakers are attached just inside the outer rim. The brains behind it all is an Arduino UNO. To connect to it, he soldered components to a blank Arduino prototyping board. That board takes input from the boombox’s line-out and does some filtering (an attempt to address some ground noise) before passing the signal on to the Arduino. That board also interfaces between the Arduino and the LED strips. The schematic is available on his GitHub page. He’d like to replace the board with a custom PCB instead and is looking for design help.

The result is not only beautiful but professional looking too. This makes us wonder why boomboxes don’t come this way. See it for yourself in the video below.

Maybe you don’t have a boombox or want to start from scratch. In that case, check out this artfully made wooden one or this custom one in a rugged, homemade case that you’d swear on first glance was military issue.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, LED Hacks


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