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Ask HN: Play music remotely for my Dad

4 points by curiousfiddler ↗ HN
Hi all,

I wanted to get some ideas from you all on the best way to do this. My dad is suffering from Parkinson's disease and lives in a different country (I live in San Francisco currently). He absolutely loves music. However, his caregivers are unaware of his music taste and in fact also don't have a good music collection or access to Spotify etc to play music that my Dad will enjoy. I have seen music soothes him while he sleeps and I wish I could play a good playlist for him from here. Can you think of a good solution?

Thanks in advance!

8 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.9 ms ] thread
linux-modder
Are either of you familar with kodi or remote access /streaming via ssh ? If so one simple option would be to setup a ssh tunnel thru to a music store on your network and have him connect to it via key (preferred) or passphrase ( less preferred for security but doable). that way you would be able to update and / or curate playlists and or even allow him to remotely access a pandora /spotify account form your network / IP and not be technically voilating ToS.
kejaed
Can you load up a cheap tablet with songs and send that to the caretakers to press play?
cauterized
Why not get him a tiny cheap media center PC or chromebook or such? You could probably even do this with a Raspberry Pi. Hook it up to a nice set of PC speakers. Set up remote access to it for yourself.

Then you can either download a selection of music to it or set it up to play from a streaming service just as you would on your own PC. If your dad wants to turn it on or off (or the caretakers need to), he can use the volume/power knob on the speakers.

Or if he likes a popular genre of music (classical? Classic rock?), maybe just get him an FM radio?

gt2
not sure if it still is the case, but last time I checked logging into Spotify from a second account begins to control the other logged in account, complete with stopping and starting play.
lwithers
This is still the case. If you login to the same Spotify account on multiple devices, you can choose which device to play on, even if you're not on the same network.
dyeje
Considering there's no one technical on the other end to set stuff up, your best bet might just be to mail him a simple stereo and weekly mixed CDs.
user7878
Remote access like team viewer etc