Wouldn't it be great if you could bring the convenience of browsing a digital movie catalog to your physical Blu-ray collection? Peter Somersby has done just that.
One of my very favorite things is when a person takes a W. Heath Robinson approach to an everyday irritation. Robinson was a cartoonist who drew incredibly complex imaginary contraptions such as the "multimovement tabby silencer", which automatically threw water at noisy cats.
Somersby's creation is actually two creations. The first, MovieNights, enables you and your friends or family to nominate films for your movie night. MovieNights then spins the wheel and eliminates each movie until only one is left; the last movie standing is the movie of the night.
That's fun. But the bit I love takes things much further and shows where the actual disc is on Somersby's shelves.
I built a touchscreen into my movie shelf that lights up where each movie is, and the TV picks our movie nightsfrom r/4kbluray
Let there be light (on your Blu-rays)
Inspired by a short from almostinventor, Somersby decided to add a touchscreen and LED lightstrips to his shelves. The result, and you need to use your movie trailer guy voice for this, is MovieShelf.
MovieShelf combines two excellent things: movies, and a shelf. As Somersby explains:
"The touchscreen shows the whole collection, with posters, search and filters. Pick a movie, and the spot where it sits lights up. Can't decide? Hit Shuffle. The shelf picks a movie and lights it up, so you just walk over and grab it. When nobody is using it, the screen runs a poster slideshow."
He continues: "The two apps are separate, but MovieNights can talk to the shelf. So when the TV reveals tonight's movie, the shelf lights up where the disc is, and someone walks over and grabs it." And it all runs on "a couple of Raspberry Pis and an Arduino" with some help from Claude and Codex AIs.
I genuinely love this because it's both completely unnecessary and completely brilliant. As redditor lappelduvide put it: "This is one the most unique ideas I've ever seen. Like a shower thought or dream you have a night but you turned this into reality. What an amazing concept."
What's next: a robot picker? Maybe! "I’ve definitely thought about it," Somersby says, "but it’s a big step up from LED strips. This is phase 1, so who knows what phase 2 brings :)"
Of course, if you're just looking to add discs to your shelves and not a smart lighting setup, then check out our Blu-ray Bounty series, where we test new 4K Blu-rays released every month to see which are worthy of adding to your collection. Here's our latest entry, but you can browse the whole library of them here.
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