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PlotClock, WeMos and Blynk Playing Vintage AMI Jukebox

Four technical innovations made this project possible: The 1977 Rowe AMI Jukebox, PlotClock robot arm kit, WeMos/ESP 8266 microcontroller and Blynk App/Cloud service. NOTE: If you don’t have the Jukebox at hand – don’t stop reading! This project can easily be adopted to control various things controlled by human fingers. One example could be a robot finger playing traditional Xylophone – maybe that instructable comes from you! My 40 years old Rowe AMI R-81 Jukebox is still working fine playing vintage vinyl singles from 60’s, 70’ and 80’s. Weighting over 160 kg (360 lbs) this player is not quite as portable as modern mp-players, but living at internet era, it is now possible to carry the jukebox and 200 vinyl records in your pocket – virtually of course! And you can even use your own playlists stored in the microcontroller! Amazing PlotClock robot is originally designed to show current time by drawing time digits on the erasable board. My adaptation for PlotClock is to use it as a robot finger for pressing Jukebox song selection buttons. The Plotclock ”finger” is driven by 3 servos controlled by WeMos microcontroller. This piece of wonder is (almost) Arduino Uno compatible and has WiFi capabilities, so it is possible to control the jukebox wirelessly from anywhere in the world. The cream on the cake comes from the incredible easy to use Blynk App and their Blynk Cloud Server giving a nice mobile phone/tablet user interface with full mobility.”

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