Scrobble Box

The Scrobble Box has evolved. Instead of a Raspberry Pi with a block of headers soldered on and a bunch of jumper wires connected to the headers on an Adafruit FeatherWing e-ink display, it now has a new Pi with no headers and a new regular Adafruit e-ink display, without all the hard-to-map-connectors featured on the FeatherWing. This simplified the wiring and gave me an opportunity to practice my soldering.

I made an image of the last Pi and moved that over to the new one. Pleasingly and surprisingly when I rebooted, the screen displayed the "I am off" message from my code, so I know that all the solder points worked. They are a beginner's soldering attempt, but they worked. That was satisfying.

Next I hooked up the love button, the KXLU switch, and the GUSH switch (which required a new addition to the code as well).

And just like that she's back and scrobbling! Next will be some aesthetic updates, and wiring the third switch in the middle to control the power, so I don't have to open the box to turn off the batteries. 

I've been wanting a way to love (aka favorite) tracks on last.fm from the Scrobble Box. With some help from my lovely wife and my keyboard collection I now have a dedicated switch that will mark the currently playing track as a loved track on last.fm. At the moment I have 715 loved tracks, and now I'll be adding more with this dedicated switch and heart key cap. Yes, it's crooked.

Today with the help of a Dremel and some hot glue I now have a mounted display in the scrobble box. The batteries are running the Pi Pico W and the E-Ink FeatherWing, so the box is completely wireless. I'm so pleased to be able to turn scrobbling for KXLU on and off with the flip of a switch and see what I've scrobbled as it happens. The next switch will probably launch the Vinyl Scrobbler webpage somehow. For now, my radio listening habit is fully trackable. 

Version 3 of the Scrobble Box has a screen! It's an E-Ink screen, and it displays the most recently scrobbled song. Soon the screen will be installed in the box itself, for now it's sitting propped up on this screwdriver handle. 

Wiring the FeatherWing to work with a Pi Pico W was a bit tricky, but it was possible. Here's my wiring diagram for the Scrobble Box display. 

Version 2.0 of the Scrobble Box is actually in a box. The box is a shell that my wife had lying around from another project, and the Pi Pico W is mounted inside on a knock-off Pop Socket with double stick tape. I mounted a battery pack I scavenged from a Circuit Playground Express kit to the bottom of the case so that the cover holding the batteries can still slide off. I cut off the connector end of the wires and soldered them to the Pi Pico W. I also soldered in the light switch. Now I have a fully wireless scrobbling switch in a box! 

The first version of the Scrobble Box consists of a Raspberry Pi Pico W powered by USB and a light switch. When I flip the switch on, my program finds the most recently played track from KXLU's Spinitron page and scrobbles it to my last.fm account. This continues in a loop and scrobbles all the tracks that are posted to the KXLU Spinitron page, until the switch is flipped off, in which case it stops scrobbling.