How does this witchery work?

Using a barcode scanner and your home wifi connection, your device will capture the barcode of your album, go out in to the public domain of barcode land and get the album and artist name. Once it has that, it converts that in to a string of letters that it can scroll across it’s screen for you to read.

I really don’t like connecting random hardware to my WiFi, what do you have to say about that?

We get it! In this world it seems like everyone is out to do malicious things. But we aren’t some random ‘hookup’ (see what we did there?) We use a secure connection to get a very strict set of information. Your devices sole job is to pass out a set of numbers out to the internet’s (the barcode number) and get an album name and artist name. Nothing more. As a result we do require access to the internet so we can look up and display the information you need. If you have what is typically referred to as a “guest “network (It’s a separate network apart from the one you use for all your home networking devices that gives access only to the internet only and not to other devices on your network) this will work great and in fact, we recommend it! We wouldn’t be able to say Hi to your printer, take your light switch out for a date, or have a one night hookup with your laptop; but it’s okay. We understand because that’s not our purpose.

Will my device work 100% of the time?

Like all technology, nothing is 100%. Mainly because there are a couple of uncontrollable factors at work here. There are millions and millions of barcodes out there for millions and millions of albums. Some albums that have the exact same artist and tracks have different barcodes based on where they were printed, when and where they were released, the material or packaging, etc.. We just cant possibly story all of that information, nor would we want to. It could get out of date real fast. We rely on source-of-truth systems/databases to get Artist/Album information. If these sources were to ever have technical issues, then you will as well. We’ve personally not ever seen it happen, but if these platforms do ever have technical issue that make them unavailable, chances are they will be restored/resolved very quickly. It’s a commerce site that can not afford to be unavailable. Besides, If you have an RGB+ series device you can always switch to another mode on your unit while their service is restored so you can still have some great visuals running while listening to your jams.

What if I don’t have a WiFi connection or my WiFi connection is unavailable?

Album information is not stored on your device. It has to get that information each time it scans, so if it does not have connectivity to the internet, the “Now Playing:” feature will not work. Also, if you have the RGBS+ Executive version, you will not be able to send custom messages to the unit to scroll/display. If you have any of the RGB+ series devices you can still utilize the Audio Spectrum Analyzer graphics to visually represent your audio as that only requires the built in mic.

My album doesn’t have a barcode on it, now what?

It’s true, barcodes did not start appearing on albums until late 70’s and weren’t 100% standard until mid 80’s so chances are you have an original album without a barcode. (re-releases will have them) Fortunately, we have a solution for that! Take a look at the BCS8+ user manual for details.