@Vishwa

I created the schematic and PCB design for the macropad. I’ve never done a hardware project before, so this is all new to me, and this is my first time using KiCad, so it was definitely a new experience.

I added so much this time I forgot everything I did, so this is just what I remember.

• Made the HTML files generate with a parallel JSON file, which I’ll use for data importing/exporting
• Added custom colors. Color Thief generates a clean palette up to 10 colors, and the user can select two to be the primary and secondary colors. This influences the entire page’s theme, since every color is derived from those two colors. The program also saves your chosen two colors in local storage, so that each page has its own selected theme. (I might move this to a JSON file, since I plan to use that for saving the tracklist info, but i’m not sure yet).
• On the home page, I made a pop-up box for the user to validate/customize album information before the page is made. This way, they can make the page name whatever they want instead of the automatic one. I still have to link this to the backend to sync the page names with the page generation.
• I finally added custom comments for the songs, which I’ve stalled for super long now. I’m debating between saving them with local storage or a seperate JSON file, so I’ve held off on the saving for now. Right now they just save in an object in the JS file.
• I made a top bar where the pages will go. I want the UI to look like Google tabs, with a (+) button that has a dropdown with all the pages.
• I fixed the entire backend and solved a bunch of problems. Before, making two pages for the same album would overwrite the old one, but now I made it make a duplicate, titled” {Album Name} 2.html” instead. I have to link this with the popup to let the user name it whatever they want, since this is going to be the page name used everywhere. I also had issues with albums with special names. For example, I knew an album titled “</3”, and the “<” and “/” would cause issues with finding the file as well as HTML formatting when generating the page. So I seperated the file name from the album name by making a separate sanitized name, which is going to be the page name. I also remember doing a ton of smaller fixes but I forgot what I did.
• I cleaned up the CSS in a bunch of places and made sure elements didn’t break with different-sized windows.

Next, I need to

• Link the popup on the Search page to the backend, so the user can customize page names before making them.
• Make the tabs system on the top, where the user can open/close whichever pages are relevant.
• Let the user update the number rating, and put some album data (median rating, user rating, album comments)
• Let the user change the album cover in the popup and on the album page
• Export album pages as JSON files

I’m almost done with the app and I think I can probably finish it up in a few more devlogs. I’m expecting two weeks until I’m ready to ship.

For the past few sessions, I’ve just been working on a dynamic theme for the album page. It automatically samples a dominant and secondary color from the album cover, and then:

• Creates a gradient for the banner, with both colors darkened (or lightened if needed) until it’s within a certain luminosity threshhold
• Darkens the primary color to create the background color
• Raises luminosity of the secondary color to color the tracklist numbers and “Tracklist” title.

I just need to make the ratings and comments for this page, and I should be done with the album pages. After that, I’ll probably work on customizing the album page themes, since sometimes they don’t pick the best colors automatically. Then, I’ll have to do rating and comment functionality.

The project is going well so far, and I think I’m close to done. I only have a few more big tasks left, and then I just have to do some finishing touches and I should be done.

Made the UI for the album pages (this is temporary, I plan to work on this a lot more later). I also added the ability to edit the album data. User input for the songs is not implemented yet, so this is all hardcoded.

I spent a while trying to use ColorThief to automatically sample a background color for the album cover, but there were some issues with the package and I couldn’t get it to work, so I just hardcoded this color for now. I plan to get ColorThief (or a similar package) working soon, since the accent color is pretty important to the look of the app.

My next steps are to implement song input (rating & comments) and improve the UI for this page, as well as the home page.

I’ve made the process to generate album pages. It’s not hooked up to a script yet, so there’s no functionality, but the Search->Page Generation pipeline works perfectly. You can search for an album with MusicBrainz API (or just give a release ID) and find an album, then get a preview to make sure it’s the right album, and finally generate an album page for it.

All that’s left is making the script to edit the album pages as needed. I’m guessing this will be in 3 parts: being able to edit album “hard” data, being able to input ratings and comments, and being able to export/import album pages as a file.

For the last part, I would like it to be a text file or CSV file, but an HTML file could honestly be easier if all the data is written in there anyways. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I need to work on the former 2 parts.

UI for the homepage is coming together well, but I might update it at the end of the project. For now, there’s a theme and it looks good, so that’s good enough. I also added a Search by Release ID feature, since the MusicBrainz API search isn’t that great and oftentimes doesn’t suggest the album that I want, so now I can just paste a release ID to get the album immediately.

Next steps are building the functionality for the rating pages and figuring out how to store the user-inputted page data.

The program can now search for albums, preview information, and load it in a new file for further use. The UI looks like a mess for now, so the next step is to fix the layout and interface. This is a great experience, learning to use the MusicBrainz API and learn how Electron works, and I’m glad to be working on this project.

Basic Electron setup for the app, learning how it works. This is my first time using Electron for any project, so this will be fun.