When HN users recommended it
3 HN users recommended this between 2023 and 2025, in 3 comments.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
3 HN users recommended this between 2023 and 2025, in 3 comments.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
Reminds me of this old Fisher Price toy "record player": https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Classics-Record-Player/d...
I was very disappointed when I bought my kid a “vintage” Fischer Price record player. Turns out it’s made in 2023 by a company that licensed the look. [1]
Instead of winding a spring, the wind knob turns on an electric motor that takes batteries.
Instead of playing the music with an embedded set of metal tines in the play head, the disk just holds and RFID and the player loads the mp3 file of what the original 1980s toy sounded like.
The thing is an abomination.
1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003CGVCXS
The weirdest decision, for me, was putting the music on the cartridges, so that each cartridge needs an SD card holder and SD card.
I would imagine putting all the music on the device and just giving each cartridge an address would have been considerably cheaper and easier. This could have been electrically, connecting different pins of the existing battery holder solution; mechanically, such that each cartridge has a key shape that depresses different microswitches in the device; magnetically, using magnets on the cartridges; or optically, using different pattern holes on the cartridges and leds with optical sensors on the device.
I think, personally, I would have gone the mechanical route and just have an array of switches in the device. Then the cartridges can be simple plastic keys and the device can draw no power when there's no cartridge.
I think the Fischer Price record player worked this way: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fisher-Price-Interactive-Packaging-.... The tracks on the record form a binary number and the record player head has mechanical switches.