This RFID Playlist Launcher Blends Both the Digital and Physical Worlds

While music has largely moved from the physical to digital realm, there’s still something interesting about engaging a tangible object to play a recorded sound. Even better, some might argue, if these audio tokens are hexagonal in shape, allowing them to tessellate on a desk or other surface for easy storage.

In order to combine these worlds, this Playlist Launcher project uses 3D-printed hexagons with RFID tags cleverly embedded during the printing process. These tiles are pressed into a reader to activate a certain playlist in a way that makes it simple for visitors to play guest-DJ with minimal explanation. The base of the device is made out of green filament painted white, and the hex-chips are emblazoned with art signifying the music “inside.”

Of course, in reality, there’s no music inside of the chips. The base actually only contains an MFRC522 RFID reader and a Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 module. This sends signals to a Raspberry Pi 3 running Volumio software that takes care of actually producing music signals, presumably through an appropriate speaker/amp setup.

It’s a neat build, one which would be relatively simple to construct if you want your own and was inspired by the QLEEK Indiegogo project if you need more inspiration. For something awesomely over the top, you could also consider creating an '80s-style Pi3 hi-fi system like the one seen here.