BailaBox - a music toy that puts your kids in charge of the playlist!
My daughter used to ask me 20 times a day to play different songs. Sometimes I would get the same request like 5 times in a row. Taking the phone out and finding it on Spotify was annoying, as it was distracting her and driving attention away from the music.
So I've built BailaBox. A music toy that lets her play the songs she wants when she wants.
It's an RFID-enabled, ESP32 toy that connects to my home network and, through Home Assistant, plays music on network speakers (in my case, I'm using a Sonos system).
First, I made a breadboard prototype, which was a nice proof of concept. But it was not very child-proof. So after some improvements, I've made custom PCBs - one for the power supply and battery charging and another for the RFID reader, ESP32 control, LEDs, buttons, rotary encoder for volume control, etc. There's also a custom enclosure for the project that I 3D printed.
The toy works with NFC tags. I'm using sticker tags that I embed inside 3D-printed tokens that contain magnets. This allows for auto-positioning on the RFID reader area (there's a corresponding magnet in the enclosure as well). To make the tokens recognizable, I print and cut custom stickers that represent songs.
I have a bunch of tokens with different songs now, or whole playlists. One could also add audiobooks, sound effects, or even full smart home automations (like, for example, a bedtime routine) as BailaBox connects to Home Assistant.
If anyone is interested in replicating it, I've made a GitHub repo with project details. It's my first attempt at custom PCBs, so I'm sure there's a lot to improve, but this version works as intended! So have a look if you are interested; let me know if you have any feedback or questions.