Slightly simplified the music player for the kids has two jobs:

1. Scan for QR codes using the camera and identify the ones that contains a Spotify URI (using zbarcam) and
2. send that URI to the MPD that plays the music from Spotify.

At the moment I am able to set up separate tests for the two jobs and both works, on there own. The problem is that I’m currently not able to set up MPD with Spotify and the zbar tools at the same time. It seems to have something to do with different operating systems and/or other kinds of conflicting requirements that I need to lock into.

For the tests right now, I use standard Raspbian plus zbar for bullet point number one and Pi MusicBox for point number two.

For my own memories sake, this is the very simple (and probably quite brittle) shell script that I’m using for bullet point 1:

My kids, Iris and Ebbe, are four and a half, and two years old respectively. Both of them loves to listen to music and dance. Compared to when I was a kid they have access to tremendous amounts of music. If I wanted to listen to a song as a child, I had to have it on a cassette or later in life a cd. Today’s kids have access to ”all the world’s music” in Spotify, Apple Music or similar.¹

The problem with the modern world in this regard is that a cassette deck and a box of cassettes is much more kid friendly than a smart device like a phone or tablet with Spotify and possibly also a smart speaker connected via bluetooth, AirPlay or a Chromecast.

Spotify has a nice solution for this in there Spotify Codes. It wouldn’t be to hard to make a whole box of cards, one for each album and/or playlist that the kids want, and teach them how to scan the cards with Spotify. The problem is that it requires them to use their iPad (or my phone, or their mother’s phone).

Why is that a problem? Because if they use the iPad they will undoubtable be sidetracked by YouTube or something similar. Sometimes having them watching videos is great. I’m certain that the reason Iris know quite a few words in English, despite being a Swede with Swedish parents, is that she’s watched a lot of English videos on YouTube. But sometimes I want them to just listen to music and not having to have a discussion about why they are allowed to use the iPad but not the apps they want.

So I’ve started toying with the idea of building them a music player that works as simple or simpler than Spotify Codes but that is a dedicated hardware device, a Raspberry Pi. The plan is for it to use either QR codes or NFC tags to control what is being played, so that way the kids can have a box of cards with artwork, similar to the box of cassettes that I had as a kid.

I think it will work.

Right now I’m going to test various setups for it and document my progress here on the blog, under the tag The Kid’s Music Player.

Some links to similar projects

• qrocodile, a QR based controller for a Sonos system.
• Marco Arment discussing his SD-card based music player
• Music Cards