Kate and I have spent the past month working on hacking into a radio and playing podcasts (little did we initially know, that Jnah had beat us to the punch 10 years ago.) The concept was based around the fact we both like the aesthetics and the physicalness of the ;rage knobs and the shifting AM/FM . There is something interesting about how radios in the 40s and 50s were actually the focal point of a living room or social interaction, and now the iTunes/podcasts fade more into the backdrop.
Here are some initial pictures of the first radio we found:
Here, we attached a potentiometer to the tuning knob and arduino and processing to pick specific values to trigger shout casts. When doing final tuning yesterday, the knob broke, and we had to get a replacement radio.
We had a lot of trouble getting the potentiometer to read the values created from turning the know. NO amount of epoxy or hot glue kept it sturdy enough. To take this project further, we would have to refine some sort of stand to keep the knob and potentiometer secure and straight.
