Circula

Today, a majority of people have reached an endless pool of music via various services such as Youtube, Spotify etc. However, their interactions involved with consuming or sharing music on these platforms occur via screen-based interfaces. Such interactions have a tendency to limit the capacities for self-expressions and personalization. Circula was designed keeping in mind the goal to give the various interactions a tangible identity and elevate the scope of self-expression.

To Discover: Turn the knobs on the sides to tune and discover different tracks on the stream. Unique patterns are generated for every track, which can be seen through the top window.

To Save: To save a song to your playlist, grab a card and simply copy the pattern. Scribble down a personal note to remember the track.

To Play: Place the card you want to play onto the scanning tray and watch Circula automatically tune into your track.

The three knobs on the circula are connected to three individual potentiometer-motors that are connected to an Arduino board. By rotating the knobs, the user effectively turns the potentiometer that cycles through the various tracks.

The knobs are also attached to three circular visual indicators that are visible through the top window of the object. The patterns created by the visual indicators can be copied down on a card.

For scanning capabilities, a camera has embedded the body, facing down. When a card with patterns is placed on the scanning tray, the device reads the card via computer vision that runs through Processing. The recognized song ID is sent back to the potentiometer-motors that then turn to the correct positions and thus playing the song from the card.