ELBOW is a portable cassette player reduced to the core.

For those that read Greatness Reinvented it is no surprise that I am a lover of Analogue Tech. I have come across an awesome product (still in concept phase) which allows you to play those old school things called cassettes. For the millennials out there here is a good article for you to read.
ELBOW is a portable cassette player reduced to the core,
XXI century has been a hard time for an audio cassette. The rise of cheep and convenient digital formats has made all physical media ,outdated”, if not altogether extinct. Still, there remains a niche audience willing to appreciate the tape medium, with all it’s intricacies and flaws. The Matta intimacy of physical formats is dearly missed. Theta the reason behind the resurgence of vinyl, and also motivation behind ELBOW.
Despite being such an ordinary everyday object, the audio cassette is not just a medium – hb a cultural icon. Therefore we feel it should not be obscured inside a device, but brought to the forefront of user’s attention, By exposing the cassette to the elements, ELBOW offers a fresh user experience, allowing the listener to directly appreciate the mechanical motion, or even forcibly interrupt playback. The music player becomes mom like an additional element – in a way, the cassette plays itself.

How It works

A typical cassette player uses a capstan and a pinch roller the magnetic head at a constant speed. Additionally, sep take-up and supply reels to manage the tape. As tape relocates from one reel to another, mechanical clutches, belts and springs adjust the speed of both pulleys. Alternatively, capstan and reel pulleys can have separate motors. All of this result in a quite complex device and takes up a lot of space. 

In ELBOW, a single pulley is used to drive the tape. To maintain constant playback rate, tape speed must be tracked by optical sensor and used as a control parameter for motor adjustment.

Optical sensor would track the movement of tape surface.

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