Sonos really is the best plug and play wireless music solution on the market. It allows you to effortlessly stream music to any room.

But what if the room in question is a shared space? A shared space, with a shared playlist? Then music can irritate, it can annoy, it can literally drive you to the point of throwing something at the source of the problem – the Sonos speaker.

We developed a solution that is as effortless as the Sonos system itself. We created a poster that connects to the Sonos system and immediately changes the track when you throw something at it—a balled up piece of paper, a dart from a Nerf gun (our favorite), anything.

Problem solved.

How did we execute in just 2 weeks?

Using the following combination of hardware and software.

Hardware

Raspberry Pi 2

MCP3008 analog-digital converter (ADC)

Force sensitive resistors

Pi Cobbler Plus

USB Wireless

Software

Ruby 2.2.1

Sonos gem

pi_piper gem

We attached a force sensitive resistor to the back of our bespoke printed Sonos poster. The resistor generates a small amount of voltage every time the poster is struck (by a screwed up piece of paper or dart from a Nerf gun). The voltage is then read by the ADC and reported to the Raspberry Pi 2 over SPI. When the voltage reading is raised above 0 the Sonos speaker is directed to play the next track.