How I connected a cassette deck to Discord

For no other reason except that I could do it with a reasonable amount of effort

Step 1: controlling a tape deck with a computer

This is actually a fairly simple task with the right kind of tape deck. When full logic control tape decks appeared on the market, the technology for infrared remotes wasn't quite there yet, so many tape decks from the '80s have a socket for a wired remote control (usually sold separately). While the exact implementation differs, the majority of such remote controls contain no active electronics, the buttons just close the circuit between different pins of the remote connector and the control circuitry inside the deck detects it in much the same way as it does with the buttons on the deck itself. In fact sometimes the remote socket is just wired in parallel with the buttons built into the deck.

This makes it superbly easy to interface with other electronics, you just need something to close a circuit. I went with optocouplers because 1) they isolate the internals of the deck from my bodge circuitry and 2) they're easy to drive, cheap and quiet in operation. ALl I need now is a programmable electronic device with some TTL level GPIO pins, such as an Arduino.

Step 2: Connecting an Arduino to the computer

Of course you may realise that an Arduino cannot connect to the internet. All it can do on its own is connect to a computer via its USB socket. This connection is normally used to upload the program you've written to the Arduino itself, but it has been made specifically to be easily coopted for any other nefarious purpose you have in mind. To wit, it is a serial connection implemented over USB using a [look up what kinda USB serial chip is on the Uno], as far as any other piece of software is concerned, it looks like a COM port you can send data to. The Arduino code needs to receive that data and turn on outputs accordingly. In fact that is all it does, the code is literally 20 lines. Any more complicated logic (such as pressing record then play in sequence to start recording on my Denon deck) is handled on the computer side of things.

Some of you may be wondering why I'm not using a Raspberry Pi to do this, since it has both GPIO pins and an ethernet connection. The answer is that I was doing this for my own amusement with stuff I already had. Except for the special DIN plugs that go into the deck's remote socket, I didn't have those kicking around.

Step 3: Connecting the computer to Discord

It would probably have been better to make this a website anyone can visit, but as mentioned above, I was very much working with the hammers I have. I don't have the slightest idea how to set up a website to send small messages to my computer, but I can make simple Discord bots. Discord also conveniently solves the issue of streaming video (mostly, more on that later). So instead of trying to learn anything about setting up a webserver or any such thing, I just made a Discord bot.

Step 3/b: Turns out the one thing a bot account can't do on Discord is streaming video

and then few people used it

Which honestly didn't surprise me much. I'm not sure it's something I'd ever try. The only reason I ever made it is because making it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.