LPCoverArt is a project I worked on in early 2017 and had on display at the 2017 Vancouver Mini-Maker Faire (along with Lode).
While the digital medium is a logical evolution from analog for music, I miss the physical artwork that gives an album some tangible context while you become familiar with the songs. This project involved making an oak frame with a 19″ 4:3 LCD screen inside, which displays the artwork at the very same size as an old vinyl LP. A thick frame border covers up the extra width.
It is powered by Raspberry Pi Zero that simply displays a website, and sleeps the display when no music is playing. I created an app for MacOS which hosts the webpage with artwork on it so that the wall-hanging frame can display it. The app picks up the artwork from iTunes via AppleScript, and hosts a local webpage using Python SimpleHTTPServer. This currently only works with iTunes on a Mac, and presumes the computer is always powered on and awake.
You can download the MacOS app here. It’s still very much WIP!
You may need to remove it from quarantine using 'xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/App'.
