Tiago Bolaños

NFC music tags

Laser-engraved wooden tags with an NFC sticker on the back. Tap one on the reader and that record plays — a physical shortcut to a streaming library.

ongoing
Tags
Laser-cut ply, NFC sticker on the reverse
Artwork
Engraved album art
Reader
ESPHome

Streaming is very good at having the music and very bad at reminding you it exists. A menu of ten thousand albums is not a record shelf. These are an attempt to put a few of them back into the room as objects you can pick up.

Five laser-cut plywood squares. Two lie face down showing white circular NFC stickers; three are engraved with album artwork.
Album art engraved on the front, NFC sticker on the back. The tag is the interface.

Each tag carries an NFC sticker on the reverse and its album engraved on the face. Tapping it on the reader starts that record.

A small laser-cut plywood box with a vinyl record engraved on the lid and a Spotify code engraved on the front panel, held in one hand with a tag above it.
The reader. A record engraved on the lid, so the box says what it is without a label.

The reader runs ESPHome, which is what makes it worth building rather than buying: the tag doesn’t have to mean play this album. It means whatever the automation says it means.

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