Office Hack #8 — Mozilla Hi Fi Raspberry Pi
Envoy is all about making things easier and more fun in the office. In that spirit, we are proud to bring you our new Envoy Office Hacks podcast series. Every week, we deliver the coolest, most ingenious, and just plain fun fixes people have invented to improve efficiency and productivity in their workplace.
Today’s Office Hack is about a custom-made streaming solution for music in the workplace. Mozilla is the maker of the Firefox web browser, and they’ve tried ALL sorts of high-tech music services in their Mountain View offices. But the one that prevailed: a homemade hack.
Allow us to present… the Mozilla Hi Fi Raspberry Pi.
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast.
The Mozilla Hi Fi Raspberry Pi involves a micro-computer, a record player, and a whole lot of vintage vinyl. This most unusual streaming music solution came about accidentally.
A “Mozillian” picked up a record player with the intent of playing around with it at home but once it came out of its box at the office… it never left.
A few cheap records later and this new-old device became a smash hit at the Mozilla main office. The popularity of scratchy old LPs began to spread.
“People saw it and other people went to yard sales, and they bought a bunch of random crappy albums, and some people went through their album collections at home and brought a bunch of random crappy albums in. We kind of have this ‘whose who’ of stuff you’d find at the bottom of a crate in every thrift store.”
Matt Claypotch, Mozilla
At first, the record player and its smooth sounds were limited to one area of the office; a louder, common area. But that limitation did not sit well with those vinyl-loving fans who wanted to enjoy the music in quieter spaces, through headphones. So, a little hacky ingenuity and this handy device facilitated group listening and private listening.
Many long forgotten LPs were suddenly on heavy rotation again. Like this one…
And no collection would be complete without…
Perhaps the biggest unexpected benefit of this hack though, is how it brought the team together in ways not anticipated.
“I think the thing that's made it so popular here is the shared discovery aspect. We get excited when people show up with a new batch of albums. We sift through it. We try and find hidden gems, and there's a cross-cultural aspect.”
Chris Lonnen, Mozilla
How to hack it
If you’d like to set-up your own custom-made streaming solution for music in your workplace, you’ll need the following:
Ingredients
- Record Player with USB port ($12o)
- Raspberry Pi ($42)
- Vinyl Records (price varies)
- Icecast download (free)
- Total cost — approx. $162+
Listen & Subscribe
You can listen to the full story in the Envoy Office Hacks podcast:
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More Office Hacks
If you enjoyed this hack be sure to check out other Envoy Office Hacks, including:
A mobile meeting space in a rolling room from white-hot software start-up, Slack:
And one office’s creative solution to boring office walls — the Wall of Lego:
And a social psychology experiment in healthy eating from Social Print Studio:
Or how about a robotic sales gong to crank up team spirit in the office:
And then there’s Hootsuite’s office hack: an open office turned ski village.
Never underestimate the power of taxidermy on company culture…
Pub Nub hacks its way from annoying coffee woes… to website.
Got an Office Hack you’d like to share? Do you know a stroke of genius that has made an office more productive or fun? You could be featured in a future Envoy Office Hack — let us know about it at officehacks@envoy.com.
