Over the past few months I have been working on an Arts Council funded project to develop and build a device that will play a unique melody from the barcode on a library card. I have been developing this with Somerset, Devon and Torbay libraries and each will have their own device installed at the end of the project.
The device uses a waveshare barcode scanner that is attached to a Raspberry Pi. The program is written using python and I have installed fluidsynth to create the sounds. The melody is created from the numbers on the barcode and will be the same each time it is played; all cards will have a different melody. There are also a number of different sounds that are used for the melody and this is also chosen using the data from the card.
The box has been designed by Laura Collins and is built from plywood and acrylic. The acrylic is frosted so that some light passes through it and you can see the shape of the Raspberry Pi and other components through it. It is slightly reminiscent of the original Imacs.
The devices will be installed in St. Thomas Library (Exeter), Taunton Library and Torquay library over the coming weeks.
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