Live Spotify Album Art Display
Englandsaurus Introduction
In the past couple weeks I've been experimenting with some different LED installations including LuMini Rings and RGB Matrix Panels. Some interesting examples to make them really pop. In the process, I stumbled across a few neat examples by ThingPulse that integrate an ESP8266 with Spotify® to control songs as well as pull down the JPEG related to the album art. I had some square matrices and an ESP32 so I figured album art would be perfect. I tried this example on the LuMini Matrices, it looked beautiful and bright, but I simply didn't have enough boards at the time to reach a high enough resolution (I had 4 boards for a total resolution of 16x16 pixels) where the album artwork looked good. While I slowly gave up on the neat example that pertained to my products in lieu of other pursuits, my coworker Wes jumped in with our 64x64 Matrix to save the day. Wes adapted my super low resolution LuMini examples to work with our 64x64 matrix, this tutorial covers just how to connect that matrix up and get it displaying some neat album art!
Required Materials
For this project, you'll need some jumper wires, an ESP32 Thing, headers, a 64x64 matrix, and a power supply capable of sourcing 2 amps. Many wall warts will work for this task, but we've included a few in the wishlist below. You may not need everything though depending on what you have. Add it to your cart, read through the guide, and adjust the cart as necessary.
Tools
You will need a soldering iron, solder, general soldering accessories, and a mini screwdriver.
Suggested Reading
If you aren’t familiar with the following concepts, we recommend checking out these tutorials before continuing.