[HN Gopher] Show HN: Giving my mother-in-law an easy internet ra...
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Show HN: Giving my mother-in-law an easy internet radio with real
icon buttons
Author : AgoRapide
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-04-17 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bef.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (bef.no)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Does anybody sell Bluetooth Bakelite Button Boxes?
|
| http://www.johnwolff.id.au/calculators/BellPunch/PLUSBakelit...
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Another retro approach: a knob that you turn that generates
| static when you're between stations.
|
| For extra authenticity, there should be hiss (or a station)
| when the knob is sitting still and crackling when it is
| turning.
| ilamont wrote:
| I am the family tech support person and I have learned that the
| things that work best are wired, tactile, and easy interfaces.
| After COVID hit I set up my father's home office, but recently
| replaced his bluetooth keyboard with a wired one which eliminates
| downtime and frustration. My mom likes her iPhone 5S with a real
| button, and I've enabled accessibility options on her large
| monitor to show a gigantic mouse pointer. My MIL has trouble
| using social media and other phone apps, but at least can answer
| FaceTime calls because the answering interface is so easy to use.
|
| Worth mentioning the 2016 OECD tech skills survey, which found
| 2/3 of people are not skilled technology users. In the U.S., <6%
| are level 3 (highest) while 20% can't use computers.
| https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...
| atleta wrote:
| Well, he could have bought an actual wifi capable radio for
| around half the price of a Stream Deck. (Unless, of course, he
| already had the latter device.)
|
| It's an existing product.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Yes, I could.
|
| It would not have been so fun. And all Internet radios I have
| seen so far have some features that irritate me. For instance
| volume is push-buttons instead of turning knobs.
|
| Actually, the only interface I would have on a radio is two
| turning knobs, one for volume and one for channel.
|
| Thats all. The rest could be some phone or PC setup like
| 'kingsuper20' suggested.
|
| Too sad Apple never gave us a radio. I might have been an Apple
| customer if they had.
| fooblat wrote:
| I love internet radio projects.
|
| Did you consider making a DIY internet radio from a raspberry
| pi? That's actually what I was expecting to see based on the
| title.
|
| I used a rpi to make an internet radio for our living room
| our of a 1950s wooden console radio I picked up at a thrift
| store for 20 euros. Works great and keeps the illusion that
| the room is free of computers.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| I was very limited with regard to time available.
|
| With one baby, one toddler and three more kids around there
| is not much free time :)
|
| I would love to put a Raspberry Pi inside an old radio
| myself.
| atleta wrote:
| A turning knob is not the best UI for channel selection. It
| is a traditional one, but even my grandmother's large box
| radio, that must have been manufactured something like 70
| years ago (not a transistor one, mind you!) had push buttons
| for remembering the stations. (Besides the tuning knob.) Or
| maybe those were 'pre-programmed', not sure.
|
| But again, if you didn't like them and had this gadget (or
| wanted an excuse to buy one ;) ), then it's the better
| solution. I was mainly reacting because it seemed like a lot
| of people thought that this is a generally practical
| solution.
| clairity wrote:
| or, you know, just a radio, a device that's cheap, reliable,
| fast, responsive, low power, potentially small/portable, fault-
| tolerant, and private and secure by default.
|
| it's a neat project, but if the goal is simply to listen to
| nearby radio stations (rather than streams), the simple radio
| is peerless.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Not nearby, that was the original problem.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, figured as much but didn't see anyone else mention the
| obvious.
|
| as mentioned in your sibling comment, i also wish apple had
| given us radio functionality in their idevices. as i
| understand it, it was mostly a matter of providing an app
| and not disabling the hardware, at least in some if not all
| iterations of the iphone.
| Koenvh wrote:
| I like this, because it's beautifully simple. I have been
| collecting radio stations since 2016 now, and something I have
| noticed is that streaming URLs tend to break rather often. It
| might be worth putting them behind a simple redirect so you can
| change the streaming URL remotely.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's clever as hell. The StreamDeck is really just programmable
| buttons that can be used for anything.
| justinboogaard wrote:
| +1 for tactile buttons!
|
| Through our work at GoGoGrandparent.com (a service that helps
| older adults and people living with disabilities use Uber/Lyft,
| grocery services, meal services and pharmacy services reliably
| without smartphones) we've interviewed dozens of folks living
| with visual impairments.
|
| The feedback that stands out the most was from a gentlemen in his
| 30s or 40s living with blindness since birth. Paraphrasing:
| "owning a smartphone was like living in a house where every time
| I entered a room, it was as if someone had just rearranged the
| furniture. Tactile buttons give me a literal feeling of control.
| If I get lost I can find my way."
|
| I thought it was really powerful.
|
| Disclaimer: Our current landing page gets accessibility wrong in
| a lot of places and we're in the middle of a site redesign to
| make it more accessible.
| [deleted]
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I spent an hour or so messing with Siri on a Mac Mini I have
| lying around from an old contract gig. Wondering how I would
| use it without much (or any) vision. It's directly hooked to a
| fairly fast lump of hardware and communicating with a
| potentially huge back-end.
|
| Utterly maddening, barely useful, overly tied to Apple
| products, and it's a design problem I had never considered
| before. Kind of disappointing after watching some video of
| Tesla auto pilot do it's thing, perhaps natural language
| processing is harder.
|
| Other people have gone down this road, but it would be
| interesting to think about how a purely audio and button based
| internet and phone system would act. It's a wonderful thought
| problem. It could well be that the solution is not in website
| redesign, but in the parsing and analysis of the website. How
| would you describe a banking site to a sightless person?
| fhgui wrote:
| http://www.q2radio.co.UK make a cube shaped internet radio - you
| assign 4 stations to 4 of the sides of the cube, whichever side
| is facing up is played
| Tarsul wrote:
| the solution involves buying a 100 euro product with 6
| customizable buttons (cool product but expensive). Anyone know of
| cheaper alternatives for a keyboard buttonset (between 4 and 20
| keys)? Probably standalone numpad (with customizable keys) comes
| closest but maybe someone knows better.
| [deleted]
| genezeta wrote:
| MAX Falcon-8. $50 assembled, $40 DIY (some soldering, but
| easy). Add a few dollars more for switches and you provide the
| keycaps. 8 programmable keys. I wouldn't call it _cheap_ but it
| 's definitely cheaper than the author's option. I got one
| somewhere; it is nice but I don't really use it much nowadays.
| opan wrote:
| Macropads are a whole big thing in the mechanical keyboard
| community. You can get one that runs QMK, you can put encoders
| on them, have many layers, etc.
|
| https://mechwild.com/product/murphpad/
|
| https://knob-goblin.com/
|
| https://github.com/dekuNukem/duckyPad
|
| https://www.gboards.ca/product/faunchpad
|
| It's also worth looking into small ortholinear boards where you
| can do the same things, but the form factor is more horizontal
| or has more keys.
|
| https://mechwild.com/product/big-dill-extended-bde/
|
| https://www.gboards.ca/product/butter-stick-limited-edition
|
| https://github.com/nicinabox/lets-split-guide
| chacha2 wrote:
| Icons on desktop
| zachruss92 wrote:
| You could do it with like an Arduino and any kind of button.
| There are tons of examples of using an Arduino to run a
| keyboard's firmware.
|
| Another project i've done was with a Rasberry pi. A benefit of
| that would be that the system is self contained. Their Python
| GPIO library is one of the easiest i've ever worked with and
| you could have it easily launch Chrome or Firefox
| programmatically and play audio without a monitor.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| I think simple website (with all your favorite channel as big
| black button) and pin it to taskbar would solve your problems
| IshKebab wrote:
| I've looked but they don't seem to exist. Closest I found was
| MIDI pad controllers (around PS40) but I'm not sure about the
| ergonomics of using a pad as a button.
|
| I gave up and went with an Mbed board instead. It has the
| advantage that you can program key sequences without writing
| any host software. I use it with Audacity.
| amelius wrote:
| Even easier (from the user's perspective) solution:
|
| 1. Make a photo of her own radio.
|
| 2. Put that photo on a tablet device.
|
| 3. Allow her to click on the photo where the buttons are.
|
| 4. Adjust stations/volume accordingly.
|
| Next step: physically operate her own radio remotely :)
|
| Or: let her bring her own radio, and use internet and an FM
| transmitter to relay the signals.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| I do not agree with the tablet thing. Too many things can go
| wrong, and tablets are touch only, no tactile feedback.
|
| But your last idea was actually an excellent suggestion :) An
| ideal hacker project!
| fnord77 wrote:
| older non-pc literal people seem to take to tablets very
| naturally though. at least from what I've seen
| _joel wrote:
| Indeed, my 80+ year grandmother uses a tablet everyday
| spoonjim wrote:
| I've seen an 80 year old with partial dementia learn how to
| use an iPad from cold start in about 15 minutes.
| ac2u wrote:
| It's exhausting getting accessibility points communicated
| when there's always a reply which is just an exception that
| proves the rule.
|
| "Oh iPad too complicated you say? Well one time I saw an
| example where that _wasn't_ the case."
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Hear! Hear!
| tga wrote:
| Given an Android phone or tablet, you can get sticky NFC tags
| and make the device play the corresponding stream when it
| touches one. Stick them to photos with the radio station logo,
| and you've got a record player / Toniebox.
|
| The tablet never unlocks, so you don't have to worry about UI
| quirks.
| tootie wrote:
| Another option is cut out a template in vinyl or even just some
| card stock (or 3d print if you can). Position each stream
| source icon behind the open spots. That being said, tablets
| aren't likely to cheaper than the device he's using.
| rakoo wrote:
| Even even easier: hack an existing radio, have its buttons
| interact with a raspberry pi and use mopidy on that raspi:
| https://mopidy.com/
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| > operate her own radio remotely
|
| I can't tell if this is suggesting OP gaslight his mother-in-
| law
| tinus_hn wrote:
| That sounds like skeuomorphism which is a big no-no with the
| HackerNews crowd
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but as much as I like all these low-tech
| websites (and I _really_ do!) - I think I need some sort of
| extension that does this: body { max-
| width:900px; margin-left:auto; margin-
| right:auto; }
|
| Because trying to read full width text on modern resolutions is
| way too wide, and I don't even run my browser full screen - I
| have no idea how people that do, can read it.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I send the page to Reader View in Firefox when I can.
| otherwise, Pocket and Outline are great for that.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I almost always have 2 vertical side by side windows (meta+left
| and meta+right shortcuts), that's useful about wide high
| resolutions
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| here is the more versatile way:
|
| <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
| scale=1">
| AgoRapide wrote:
| By the way, while we are discussing readability, important
| message to all hipsters: We boomers prefer high contrast, that
| is black text on white background.
|
| Sites with grey text on grey background I usually skip.
|
| Once Firefox was my web browser because it has a very easy
| setting for forcing exactly this (black on white).
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Firefox has a reading mode that is quite handy.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Reader mode, when it works, is a godsend for these sites.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| I don't think you'll need an extension, most browsers still
| support a custom CSS file, I think.
| PowerfulWizard wrote:
| I grew up reading the newspaper every day and I prefer quite a
| narrow margin, here is my bookmarklet for narrowing pages (and
| it changes font).: javascript:!function(){var
| e,t;e='body {margin: auto;margin-left: 100px;max-width:
| 540px;font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif;}',t
| =document.createElement("style"),t.type="text/css",t.appendChil
| d(document.createTextNode(e)),document.getElementsByTagName("he
| ad")[0].appendChild(t)}();
|
| You could change the "540" to "900" for your needs. I prefer
| this to narrowing the window because I prefer the whole screen
| to have a uniform background color.
|
| Edit I don't think it is infaillible, it didn't work on this
| page, but it works well on pages with no markup. For more
| complicated site you may try this:
| https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark/
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I didn't think of doing this! I'll edit your snippet to do
| just the css I need and save it as a bookmark(let). Cheers!
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I typically read either on mobile, where reader view is a
| single tap. On Desktop if it's too wide (and it rarely is since
| I browse at 150% zoom) then popping the window to one side is
| generally sufficient (two taps: Cmd-Right), and if that's not
| enough, follow up with Cmd-+.
|
| To be honest I never notice this particular problem because
| it's easy to mitigate. The one I _do_ notice is when someone
| creates an unnecessary minimum width so all the text doesn't
| fit. I'm not a huge fan of max width either but it usually is a
| pretty minor annoyance.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Author here. I agree :)
|
| What I do myself on sites like this is to use CTRL+ until the
| text is so large that I can read multiple lines in parallell
| (that is the secret behind speed reading, but the lines can not
| be too long of course).
| [deleted]
| nitrogen wrote:
| Might also try resizing the browser window. It's kind of a
| waste to have a single app fill the entire screen, just to put
| blank bars on the sides.
| em-bee wrote:
| resizing the browser window messes with the other tabs which
| i do prefer in fullscreen, so i'd have to switch back and
| forth
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It's kind of a waste
|
| To you. What I or someone not you does is up to them. For
| example, keeping a window full screen might have a lot of
| empty/negative space, but sometimes that's the desired effect
| to cover up all of the other things attempting to grab one's
| attention without having to hide/minimize other windows.
| [deleted]
| keyrat wrote:
| I have a standalone internet radio device because I also wanted
| buttons.
|
| To find streams I usually use Radio Garden: http://radio.garden
|
| Use the network inspector while browsing stations and you'll find
| a working URL to the stream you can use anywhere.
| tyingq wrote:
| The photo is much higher resolution than it appears to be:
|
| http://bef.no/radio/Photo3.jpg
|
| Those buttons look great, and this is a very thoughtful idea.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Never took the effort to reduce it to standard Internet size.
| But I will if I get 10 000 hits on the page tomorrow too.
| Amazon wants its dues.
|
| Yes, it looks really cool, expensive but cool.
| tyingq wrote:
| Oh, I mentioned it in case anyone wanted a better look at the
| buttons...
| don-code wrote:
| This is amazing - and incidentally has given me a solution to a
| very real problem.
|
| My grandmother is suffering from dementia, and within the last
| few months has forgotten how to tune a radio. She's an avid radio
| listener, so I worked around this by buying her a few radios,
| tuning them, and labelling them - so she only has to hit the
| power button on the one she wants.
|
| Unfortunately, she's not thrilled by how much space the set of
| radios takes up, and she's also at the edge of the coverage area
| for her favorite FM station.
|
| Within the next few weeks, I'll definitely give this a shot with
| a Pi Zero W, and hopefully write something up on how workable of
| a solution this is for her.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| A SDR + some sort of "stream deck" from the parent article
| could be a potential "offline" solution. You could even wire a
| couple mechanical keyboard switches to Rpi's GPIO pins for
| selecting preset channels and avoid the stream-thingy all
| together.
|
| RTL-SDR: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0129EBDS2
|
| https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR/wiki/PythonSupport
| dehrmann wrote:
| I think there's a business opportunity around people who aren't
| tech literate and want what tech they have to stay the same,
| but every time I think about what an ecosystem that could
| handle everything from photo sharing to email to even the TV,
| it seems like a fool's errand because the market seems small,
| it keeps shifting to people to are comfortable with somewhat
| newer things, and I don't think enough people would actually
| pay for it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Instead of mucking about to get Chrome to play various streaming
| formats - author could have launched VLC instead. VLC will play
| any URL you throw at it. I have completed the software of a
| Raspberry Pi radio project, I've been procrastinating on the
| hardware for months now (buttons, DAC/amp speaker and maybe tiny
| OLED screen?)
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Good point, even more so because I use VLC myself because of
| the exact same reason, it plays anything. I just never thought
| of giving it URLs, only local files.
|
| (But the user interface in VLC sucks though...)
| raesene9 wrote:
| Stream decks are really nice, I got one recently and have been
| playing around with various uses.
|
| So far I've hooked it up to auto-post things to a Slack (using
| IFTTT) and done bindings for a MMORPG (DDO) as well as it's
| intended use (scene switching in OBS)
|
| All works fine and it's pretty easy to setup.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm confused on what the stream deck actually is. And the
| elgato site is overloaded with motion graphics. Is it basically
| just a grid of buttons with LCDs backing them? So you can
| attach a dynamic icon to each button and pressing it will run
| some macro on the host PC?
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Yes
| raesene9 wrote:
| Pretty much that. In addition to raw macros it has
| integrations for all the main streaming apps (e.g. OBS) which
| simplify the process of adding actions for them.
|
| So for example I can easily select scenes from OBS within the
| stream deck application to add them.
|
| In addition there's various add-ons that can be enabled, so
| for there are buttons that'll show your CPU usage or Internet
| speeds.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Pattern recognition is NOT AI!
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| FYI - access to the site via HTTPS is broken, which makes it hard
| to access on browsers with https-only mode enabled.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Thanks for the information, I will considering getting myself a
| SSL certificate. I did not knew this to be a problem until now.
| toast0 wrote:
| FYI - browsers with https-only mode enabled are broken, which
| makes it hard to access HTTP only sites.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| FYI - "https-only" mode does not work the way you think it
| does ;) The site is hard to access on such browsers only
| because it actually does serve something over HTTPS -
| however, it's just an error page there.
| q3k wrote:
| Just because there is something on this domain listening on
| :443 and serving HTTPS, doesn't mean it has to serve the
| same content as the HTTP on :80, or even work at all.
|
| Always-redirect-to-HTTPs plugins _are_ broken by assuming
| otherwise.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > doesn't mean it has to serve the same content as the
| HTTP
|
| Of course, that's the exact reason I wrote the original
| comment.
| AgoRapide wrote:
| Author here. I took a look in IIS Admin and is unable to
| see WHERE did I ask it to serve https. I thought I was
| http only. The bindings only say http, both for the
| bef.no site and for the 'Default Web Site'.
| rakoo wrote:
| Are we still arguing for HTTP-only sites ?
| AgoRapide wrote:
| I would link to implement https since almost all other
| sites I surf on now are https by default.
|
| But the last time I tried it with multiple domains pointing
| to the same server it was too cumbersome.
|
| And having to renew the certificate is also not very
| appealing for a small hobby site.
| rakoo wrote:
| The last two are solved with modern software and with the
| ACME protocol. Just use Caddy, it's the easiest way to
| host HTTPS websites.
| progman32 wrote:
| Broken is in the eye of the beholder. Why the hard stance?
| toast0 wrote:
| These plugins are based on a wrong assumption that the
| scheme is not an important part of the url. For some urls,
| the assumption works; for others, it doesn't and the result
| is an interminable stream of messages complaining that
| something is broken. The thing that is broken is the
| assumption.
| Havoc wrote:
| Very wholesome :)
|
| Good way of staying in your MIL good graces too lol
| gesman wrote:
| Big kudos to you for supporting mother-in-law!
| stonesweep wrote:
| If the author is reading this, you've hit/stumbled on "HTTP Live
| Streaming" radios which are sort of the next evolution of classic
| Shoutcast/Icecast generated streams. There are better clients for
| it out there than Chrome which could probably enhance the
| experience (proper audio controls, etc.):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming#Clients
| paulmd wrote:
| there are some audio clients with http interfaces - I know VLC
| does, for one. So depending on how fancy you want to get,
| there's quite a lot of buttons a dedicated app could push on an
| audio client to get it to do exactly what you want, just by
| sending some HTTP requests (although just plain command line
| may be fine).
| AgoRapide wrote:
| I am reading this, just been busy with some errands last hour
| :)
|
| Thanks for the tip, a dedicated application in combination with
| Stream Deck sounds even better.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| That's a really good idea.
|
| For reasons I won't trouble anyone with, I've been educating
| myself with accessibility features on computers/phones/tablets,
| smart speakers, appliances, etc. It's funny how much shittier it
| all is than it could be.
|
| It certainly hasn't helped that the button-per-function thinking
| in consumer product design has been largely replaced with low
| cost small displays. Maybe I'll design a piano that uses sub-
| menus to play each note.
| hawski wrote:
| Could you trouble me with reasons? I for one just looked around
| what accessibility APIs are where and am thinking about a
| custom widget toolkit that would go from accessibility first
| down to typical graphical stuff. So if that's not a trouble for
| you, could you expand?
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| You know, a reasonable place to start would be to (for
| example) fire up a Mac, fire up Siri, turn off the monitor,
| try to get anything done at all.
|
| Write some software, set up the machine differently, reboot
| it, turn off the monitor, try again.
|
| Wash, rinse, repeat.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I was just thinking about how I'd like to redesign an internet
| radio.
|
| . Break apart the programming/setup from the physical
| interface.
|
| . Use a phone or pc for all setup, perhaps like a Google wifi
| router, a lot of the time this is done by a different person
| than the end user.
|
| . make it look like a Tivoli Model One, except with an 8 (or
| so) pole switch or button set. off/am/fm/aux/internet preset
| 1-5
| Our_Dream wrote:
| >It can not be made simpler than this. Pole please...
| [deleted]
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