cliveb Wrote:
>
> Back in the days when I used a CD player, there was a wall full of CDs
> in a rack. When I fancied listening to some music, I'd walk up to the
> rack and start browsing, often scanning almost at random. I'd spot a CD
> that took my fancy and put it on.
>
I've idly wondered about solutions to this in the past, but have
ultimately not had the motivation to look more deeply into them. What
I'd like to see is a setup involving some form of lightweight portable
hardware (or something attached to my CD rack) and a server plugin --
the hardware to be applied to a chosen CD in some way and the plugin to
start playing the associated files.
This would restore the tactile component to browsing and choosing a
disc to play -- with potential benefits including the ability to queue
up several discs. What follows is all speculative, and I've neither
implemented nor entirely thought through any of it.
Many (indeed, most commercial) CDs have barcodes printed on the
outside. A cheap barcode reader could be used to scan the barcode and
trigger playback (or playlist addition). Disadvantage: no good if
there's no barcode on the disc!
Most CDs will have unique cover art. Perhaps some sort of optical
device (a handheld scanner) could take a picture and use image
recognition routines to try matching against known CD covers? This
would be complicated, of course (not to mention the fact that the
software would have to orientate the image to be square with the x & y
axes, and repeat its checks for the 4 possible rotations). Efficient
matching might look for rough commonality at first then increase the
accuracy to whittle down the choices -- if there's a match at the
quick-and-dirty stage, it wouldn't necessarily have to make the harder
checks if the disc was assumed to be in the database. I know little
enough about image processing that the preceding suggestion may be
utterly fanciful. :-) Disadvantage: CDs with no (official) packaging
can't be recognised (but this could be mitigated by the use of custom
covers which utilise some base design and, say, a large-print 5-digit
serial number).
(Dealing with ambiguous results in the above suggestion would be easier
if user feedback were possible: perhaps a PDA or phone with built-in
camera could take the snapshot and also allow user interaction, such as
disambiguation within a shortlist, play/add choice, choice of individual
tracks...)
RFID: if one could get hold of a number of small RFID tags, one could
somehow attach a tag to each CD's packaging. To make this unobtrusive,
the tag would need to be small; it may fit nicely between the two layers
of the back of a standard jewel case. With hundreds of RFID tags in one
place, the reading hardware would need some sort of shielded area in
which to wave/swipe/place the desired CD... I think. I don't know much
about RFID technology! Disadvantage: cost of tags (barcodes and cover
art are inherent in the packaging and require no purchases).
(Another possible use for RFID tags, assuming a reasonable range and
ability to determine direction, might be to set up readers at three
points in the house and triangulate in 3D the position of a misplaced
CD...)
Any other ideas? Any comments on the viability of these suggestions
("it'll never work" is fine, but I'd appreciate an explanation in that
case)? The core idea is to read and store some physical attribute of
each CD, so that files (or directories, or some other entity
representing a CD) may be associated with it. (Aside: a multi-disc set
which lives in a single jewel case would likely have all discs
associated with a single attribute. A set which had individual discs
in their own jewel case, all stored within a larger box, could have
individual disc associations as well as the association of the box with
the whole set... because the association is not with a disc, but with
the box, essentially.)
Cheers,
Steve
--
smst
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