Hi,
there’s an interesting kickstarter project right now that features an independent, programmable control-knob that communicates via Bluetooth 4.0 LE. This would make a nice addition to a MusicBox or otherwise “smart” raspberry pi.
Nuimo: Seamless Smart Home Interface
I personally miss an easy controller for MusicBox and other radio-controlled appliances because infrared is to “local” and the web interface always a couple of clicks away.
Jochen
Looks cool. It’s just unfortunate that the client/interface is twice as much as the server it’s running on. Although saying that, I guess it makes more sense to spend money on the thing you actually have to interact with.
You’re right. For a controller it is kind of overpriced. I’m backing it with the early bird price now, but still…
The form factor is great for easy remote control jobs (and more if you look at Nest). Don’t quite get why other companies don’t build something like that as well. It would fit quite well in Logitech’s Harmony line up.
It is kind of a gamble what actually comes out of the campaign in the end, but apparently they are open to developers and see it as an open platform. So I hope for the best.
Support for raspberry seems quite possible. There are several people in the comments who want to try just that with different applications running on the raspberry (OpenHab or FHEM was mentioned). My last free USB port on the Rpi2 is then going away for the Bluetooth dongle… I wish they would build the RPI with integrated Wifi and BT 
Have you seen the C.H.I.P board on kickstarter that’s due next year? It has
exactly that. And only $9 too. But only time will tell if it’s any good,
I’m not holding my breath.
Hey,
yes, I have received the nuimo this year but I have not completed the integration into my setup completely.
The device itself looks very nice and feels high quality. The responsiveness & usability of the touch and fly-by gestures has been improved by recent firmware updates. From a user perspective what works out of the box is for example controlling the music app like spotify on a phone via the official apps (Hue, Sonos and some other systems are also supported)…
For the raspberry pi, there is an official python SDK (among others) and examples on how to connect to the nuimo and receive events from it. So you get like a “swipe left”, “touch right”, “rotate x” kind of event and are then free to do whatever with that in python. You can also display something on the dotmatrix display. So, to integrate it with Musicbox, you can either call command line mpc commands and/or make HTTP calls to the web api.
I’m for example building a small menu structure that allows you to control the current playback and additionally change Web radio stations and so on. For that, I “designed” some icons or texts that can be displayed on the 9x9 dot display.
I’m curious on how stable the bluetooth connection will be and how much of a pain the detection and recovery of disconnects will be. Since I’m not finished with the script yet I have no longterm use experience.
Jochen