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Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been meaning to put together a music player for my kids that uses one of: qr codes, bar codes, or NFC tags to select the music to play (no screen). The first two having surprisingly expensive readers (you can buy a crappy smartphone for the price of a dedicated usb always-on auto barcode or qr code scanner, and cheap webcams can’t focus correctly for the job of close-up code reading) and the latter confusing the hell out of me for any option that doesn’t use really expensive hobbyist-targeted tags ($0.50/tag or higher) have kept me from going beyond the googling phase.

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I had a similar idea. Since we have a lot of old Disney films on VHS, I would like to be able to put the box in a place and have the system and play back the HD version from my media center. I investigated RFID/NFC tags, but what would also be cool would be a kind of ultra flat scanner.

I imagine something purely optical, with no moving parts. You have a glass plate, maybe a few cm high, that you put the object to be scanned on, and the light is reflected into the plate on to a small CCD sensor hidden on the side or somewhere else. It doesn't have to have a great resolution, just enough to distinguish different movies. I tried googling, but it seems something like that doesn't exist (probably the achievable resolution is too bad for real world usage).

Its a bit unfortunate, I'd like to bring back a bit of physicality to my computer interactions.

Perhaps you could read the barcode on the box?

I'm trying to avoid a barcode reader "gun", or hanging a barcode reader from a cantilever. Ideally, I just want a flat platform, or something that can hold the box.

I'm pretty sure it should be possible to make a waveguide from properly shaped plexiglas and mirrors, so that you can hide a sensor below or in the side, and have it focused on the plexiglas surface. However, I can't figure out the geometry.

I guess if I actually built the project, the RFID tags would be the best option.

That makes sense. I agree that RFID is probably the way to go. What I was thinking of was closer to what you are describing though, or to a supermarket style in-counter barcode reader. I don't know if there's a minimum barcode-to-reader distance, but I suspect you could hack something up by building a box around one of these types* of readers.

Another downside to the barcode approach is also that it requires correct alignment. Maybe you can get greater convenience from RFID.

On the other hand, the RFID approach means you don't have to modify the boxes at all. Because the code should hold some semantic meaning, you could maybe even set it up to download the requested movie on demand, so that you don't have to build your own database...

Regardless, it's a fun idea!

* https://www.amazon.com/Barcode-Omnidirectional-Hands-Free-Su...

You can find a pack of ten blank NFC "stickers" on Ebay for less than $2, eg.: https://www.ebay.com/itm/10pcs-Ntag213-14443A-NFC-Tags-Stick...

They use a standard protocol[1], so I think any reader/writer that implements it should work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443

One of the things I really miss with electronic book/music collection is the cover art: many of them are scary, unique, atmospheric, beautiful, and very much a living part of the album itself.

E-ink devices are brilliant things, but had I encountered Dragonlance without Elmore's paintings - or only in black & white - they may not have made the impression they did.

So a collection with large, good quality cover art, combined with qr codes that enables/plays/downloads the relevant book/album to your device is a pretty neat idea.

I've had the idea since the early 00's to build "Dial M for MP3." This would have a rotary dial interface to a jukebox-style playlist on a printed card.

What's wrong with cheap handheld barcode scanners, like this for $17:

https://www.amazon.com/Barcode-Scanner-Symcode-Handheld-Read...

It just acts as a USB keyboard (no drivers needed), so you could easily hook it up to a Rasperry Pi to do what you want.

Maybe an old CueCat could work as a cheap barcode scanner?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15

If you don't mind tinkering, a raspberry pi plus either a camera or a RFID reader would probably do the trick, for under $100 total.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14028 <= Camera

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9963 <= RFID reader

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14147 <= Example of RFID tags

Have a look at https://yotoplay.com , it sounds similar.

Have you tried an Amazon Echo or similar microphone?

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