Cards

A card starts an action: play an album, continue an audiobook, tune a station, make it louder, shut the box down. Cards are registered in the web page and need no editing of files.

Registering a card

• Easiest: play something, tap the card button in the player, hold the card on the reader.
• A card the box does not know: when you hold it on the reader, the player shows Register.
• From the list: Settings → Cards → card list → +, hold the card on the reader, choose what it does.

While you register, a card that is already in use does not start playing.

What a card can do

Action	What happens
Play music	an album, a folder or one song
Play audiobook	continue where the child stopped, or start over
Play radio	a station
Play podcast	the newest episode not heard yet, or a chosen one
Audio and volume	louder, quieter, pause, next, previous, shuffle, repeat
Timers and system	sleep timer, read out the IP address, shut down
Time limits	extra time for today, see Time limits

A card for grown-ups, for example “shut down”, is best kept where the children do not find it.

The same card again

When a folder card is put on again while its folder plays, the box can do something else than starting from the beginning: pause and continue, play the next song, or restart. This is set under Settings → Cards (Same card placed again). Audiobook cards always continue.

Cards that stay on the box

Some readers notice when the card is on the box and when it is taken off. With such a reader the box can behave like a figure on a speaker: music plays while the card is on and pauses when it is taken off. Switch on place instead of swipe for the reader and choose the action for taking the card off, for example pause. The action is the same for all cards of that reader. Putting an audiobook card back continues the book. Which readers can do this is in RFID readers.

A single card can be excluded from the removal action with ignore_card_removal_action: true in its entry in cards.yaml (useful for cards such as “start a timer”), and ignore_same_id_delay: true lets it repeat while it lies on the reader (a “next song” card).

Where cards are kept

Cards are in settings/cards.yaml, one entry per card. The web page writes it; you can also edit it. The card number must be written in quotes:

'0001':
  action: player.pause
'0002':
  action: player.play_card
  args:
    folder: path/to/folder

All actions, with their arguments, are listed by the running box at http://<name>/api/v1/actions. Frequent ones: player.play_card, player.play_album, audiobooks.play, radio.play, podcasts.play, player.toggle, player.next, player.prev, player.shuffle, player.repeat, volume.change_volume, system.say_my_ip, hardware.shutdown.

Not all cards work

Readers read cards of one frequency (125 kHz or 13.56 MHz), and some readers only know some card types. See RFID readers.