This project was inspired by trendy bumper stickers that say something along the lines of "Keep honking! I'm listening to…" before listing an obscure song or genre of music. Dupont decided it would be fun to create something that would automatically update to reflect whatever music he's currently listening to on Spotify. Instead of a sticker, however, it's actually a Pi powered HDMI display.
What's cool about this project is how it's completely automated. You don't have to do anything special to turn it on as the Pi receives power from the car battery when you turn the car on. It also turns off when the car is turned off so it won't drain the battery. The Pi connects to the internet to pull the currently playing song from Spotify before parsing the information through a tool called Val Town to create a PNG graphic for the display.
(Image credit: Guy Dupont)
Dupont is using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W connected to an HDMI display for visual output which is mounted to the car carefully to avoid shorting. The Bumpin' Sticker is also weatherproofed so it can stand up with outdoor use.
The original plan was to connect the Pi to a hotspot on his phone to get an internet connection but Dupont decided to go a different route to make the system more autonomous. A secondary board, the Boron IoT development board from Particle, is used to connect to the internet using cellular data. This particular board requires no monthly service fee but it is limited in its data capacity which is ideal for a project like this.
According to Dupont, the project is completely open source and he has plans in the works to share build details as well as source code information over at GitHub in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out this Raspberry pi project in action over at YouTube.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
