This old Android phone is living its best life listening to San Francisco f
 

• Bop Spotter uses Spotify to monitor what’s playing on a public street.
• The solar-powered project has been running 24/7, posting a record of songs to its website.

What do you get when you combine an old Android smartphone, Shazam, a solar panel, and a street pole? If you said “the hottest social experiment this week,” you might be onto something.

Developer Riley Walz has cooked up a project he’s calling Bop Spotter. Deep in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, Walz has deployed his Bop Spotter hardware to listen in on the vibrant soundscape that the community generates, and try to identify what it’s hearing. He’s rigged up an Android phone to perpetually recharge itself with a solar panel, and its only other task is to run Spotify round-the-clock to recognize the tunes emanating from passing cars, boomboxes, and maybe even some particularly talented street performers.




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