Time Machine Operating Instructions

Assembly

Remove the micro SD card from the adapter, and insert into the Raspbery Pi. The SD card goes into a small metal cage on the back side of the raspberry pi (the opposite side from the 40-pin connector).

Plug the Raspberry Pi into the connector on the Time Machine board. The Pi must be plugged in such that the USB power, and the headphone jack are on the left side when the Time Machine is viewed from the front. Use screws to secure the Raspberry Pi to the Time Machine.

Plug in a micro USB connector to the PWR IN connector on the Raspberry Pi (there is only one such connector on a Raspberry Pi 3A…other Pi’s have separate Power and USB connectors…look for “PWR” on the board if in doubt).

Connecting to Wifi

The Time Machine screen will come on when power is connected to the Raspberry Pi. When the Time Machine is powered up, it will prompt you to select a Wifi name and input the passkey.

Selecting the Wifi

Turning the year knob changes which Wifi name will be displayed in red. The wifi name which appears in red, with a “>” at the beginning will be chosen when you press the select button. To select the Wifi displayed in red, press the select button.

Note: For wifi names which are longer than 13 characters, the display will show the first 13 characters when the name is not the current wifi, and the last 13 characters when the name is the current wifi. Also, the wifi names are shown in alphabetical order. In this way, you should be able to identify the wifi you want, even if the first 13 characters in the name are the same. Note: For users with hidden wifi names, select the wifi name “HIDDEN_WIFI”. This will prompt you to enter your wifi name manually.

Entering the Wifi Passkey

The screen will prompt you to input the passkey for the selected Wifi.

A list of characters will be shown in white, with one “selectable” letter shown in red.

• Turn the year knob to change which character is shown in red.
• Press select button to select the red character.
• Once the entire password has been entered, press the stop button to indicate that you have finished.
• If you make a mistake, turn the year knob all the way back until the “DEL” is shown in red. Pressing the select button erases the last character selected.

Once the correct Wifi name and password are entered, the Time Machine will launch the main program. You will not need to re-enter this information again as long as it remains valid. If you take the time machine to a new Wifi or change your password, the Wifi/passkey entry program will run again after a reboot.

The Audio Output

Analog Output

The Time Machine is currently configured to output analog audio from the headphone jack, or Digital Audio via HDMI. You can plug this into your stereo using a cable like this, or an adapter like this

Digital Output

To send the Time Machine audio to output Digital Audio through the HDMI connector, simply plug the HDMI connector on the Raspberry Pi to a suitable device (eg. a Television), and reboot. The audio will then come out the HDMI. Note: You need to reboot to change where the audio is sent.

Using the Time Machine

Using the Time Machine should be very intuitive.

• Select a Month, Day, and Year by turning the Month, Day, and Year knobs.
• Press the select button to select the date
• Press the play/pause button to play the show.
• Stop, Rewind, Fast Fwd behave as expected. See details below.

The Screen Layout

The top of the screen shows the staged date in a large font in the MM-DD-YY format.

If there is a show on the staged date, the venue, city, state is shown below the staged date. If there is a tape from the archive on that date, which is not a show, this area shows the tape identifier (usually something like “gdYYYY-MM-DD…”). Note that the venue, city, and state usually do not fit on the screen and will “scroll” over time.

The area of the screen showing the venue, city, state will alternately display the tape identifier. If the tape is soundboard recording, the tape identifier is shown in white text. If the tape is an audience recording, the tape identifier is shown in red text.

If the staged date is selected (by pressing the select button) it becomed the selected date, and is shown in a smaller font at the bottom of the screen in MM-DD-YYYY format.

The current track and next track are shown in the middle of the screen in a red font.

The bottom right-hand corner of the screen shows the playstate, either playing, paused, stopped, or empty.

Details about each knob and button

However, some special controls and shortcuts are documented here. Each knob can be turned, and also pressed as a button. Each button may be “pressed” or “held” (pressed for a predefined period, generally 1 second).

Month Knob

• Turning the Month knob changes the month of the staged date from 1 to 12.
• Pressing the Month knob puts you into (or back out of) “Experience Mode”. In Experience Mode, you can not see which songs are coming up, rewind, ffwd, or stop the current show. As if you were there, experiencing the show.

Day Knob

• Turning the Day knob changes the day of the staged date from 1 to 31 (depending on the Month (and Year if a Leap Year))
• Pressing the Day knob moves the staged date to the next date on which there is a tape in the archive.
• Holding the Day knob (for 3 seconds) turns off the screen. Turning or pressing any of the 3 knobs will wake up the screen.

Year Knob

• Turning the Year knob changes the year of the staged date from 1965 to 1995.
• Pressing the Year knob moves the staged date to today’s month/day during the currently staged year (today in history, whether there is a tape on that date or not). Pressing the Year knob again will move the staged date to the next today in history on which there is a tape in the archive (or, if this is the last, it will start over again from 1965).
• Holding the year knob puts the Time Machine on tour in the currently selected year. This means that, whatever else the Time Machine is playing, it will play the Today In History show for the “on tour year” at the time that the show began (if known) or the default start time. To exit on tour mode, hold the year knob until it says that the Tour is finished (It will require an extra 3 seconds of holding the year button, in order to confirm).

Select Button

• Pressing the Select button selects the staged date, making it the selected date. This stops any currently playing tape.
• Holding the Select button cycles through the tape identifiers of the staged date. The identifiers are shown in the venue, city, state field. Red text indicates audience recordings. Releasing the Select button selects the tape identifier currently displayed. In this way, all tapes from the archive are reachable.

Play/Pause Button

• Pressing the Play/Pause button plays or pauses the tape from the selected date.
• Holding the Play/Pause button (for 8 seconds) selects and plays a random show from the archive.

Rewind and Fast Forward Buttons

• Pressing Rewind or Fast Forward advances to the next or moves back to the previous track.
• Holding Rewind or Fast Forward advances or moves back the play head by 30 seconds every 2 seconds.

Stop Button

• Pressing the Stop button stops the playback and moves the play head to the beginning of the show.
• Holding the Stop button (for 8 seconds) prepares to download the latest version of the software and restarts the program. After 8 seconds, the screen will display a message asking to continue hold the stop button for another 5 seconds if you really want to update. USE WITH CAUTION

Advanced Usage

The Options Server

NOTE: This feature is still VERY EXPERIMENTAL. Proceed with caution

Your Time Machine will briefly display your ip address at startup. The ip address is a set of 4 numbers separated by dots (.), for example 192.168.0.4. I will refer to this as below.

When your Time Machine runs, there is also an options service, which you can connect to on a browser which is on the same wifi. To connect to the options server, point a browser on a computer or phone connected to the same wifi to the address :9090. In my case it is 192.168.0.4:9090.

The browser displays the options which you can set. NOTE: if you set an option to something that the Time Machine cannot understand, it will use the default value for every option. The options currently supported are

• COLLECTIONS String. You can put a single or comma-separated list of valid archive.org collection names in this field. Eg. GratefulDead, RobertHunter, PhilLeshandFriends, JonahCohen. Default: GratefulDead
• QUIESCENT_TIME Integer Number of seconds to wait for “select” button to be pressed after changing the date. After this time, the staged date will revert to the selected date. Default: 20
• SLEEP_AFTER_SECONDS Integer Number of seconds to wait after pause or stop before turning off the screen. Default: 3600
• SCROLL_VENUE true or false. Whether to scroll the name of the venue if it doesn’t fit on the screen. Default: true
• FAVORED_TAPER String. If this string appears in the tape identifier, the tape will get 2 extra “stars” in the tape-ranking algorithm. Default: miller
• PWR_LED_ON true or false. Turn on or off the Raspberry Pi’s power LED. Default: false
• AUTO_PLAY true or false. Play a tape as soon as it is selected. Default: true
• RELOAD_STATE_ON_START true or false. Reload the latest state of the Time Machine when restarting. Default: true
• DEFAULT_START_TIME HH:MM:SS. The time of day that a show should start when in “on tour” mode. Default: 17:00:00.
• TIME_ZONE select from a (very limited!) menu. This is used to determine the date for “today in history”, and in “on tour” mode.

As you can see, this needs work!

Enjoy!