Scanning device + rotating disc with patterns on them = modulating

[KarenColumbo]

Can't get those guys from Unilad out of my mind (https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=126745.0).
I visualized a stompbox with an interchangeable rotating cardboard (or some other material) disc with patterns on it (speed adjustable) which get's optically scanned by the working part of a barcode scanner. The scanned result could be used for modulation or sound forming purposes.
One could even draw his or her own patterns. Maybe WITH CRAYONS Or stick a photograph on it. What do I know?
Could such a thing be built?
Highly unlikely, but I find the idea loveable.
(Edit) Maybe this thread could be just a post in the "Steal my idea" thread, couldn't it?

[Mark Hammer]

Don't need a barcode.  Keep in mind that many optical pedals, like those made by Morley, used a lightsource and LDR with a "shutter between them.  The shutter often looked like the interleaved contacts of a touch-pad, but opaque and on an otherwise clear medium.  So  one could draw or paint patterns on a clear disc, position a lightsource on one side and an LDR on the other.  As the disc rotates, it occludes the light in different ways.  If you wanted to go completely nuts, one could use multiple LDRs in a bank, with different concentric "shutter" patterns, affecting each LDR differently, perhaps to modulate different parameters.

[Axldeziak]

Remove the foil from an old CD, print a sticker with the pattern you want, and spin it with the cd spindle drive.

It's been done several times for optical tremelos.

Something similar could be done with magnetic strips like a credit card reader. (Maybe done in a spiral like a cd or record) There was even a toy music player for kids that used that concept.

[idiot savant]

https://makezine.com/projects/optical-tremolo-2/

[KarenColumbo]

Yeah, you are, of course, right.

But there must be more to this. I did not formulate this too well, I'm sure. But then I'm not entirely sure what a barcode scanner spits out after having scanned the (digital, I presume) information it's supposed to scan. If it's just a single number, okay, that's not worth the effort.

I see this a bit like a music box with its little pins on a rotating cylinder only rotating around a more convenient axis.

My hope is that the information that is read is reasonably occluded and at the same time complex so it results in data that could be used for several values at once while you never really know what happens when you draw such a pattern and let it be read. I mean, some 8 to 13 digits, spit out in a certain "rhythm" - that's a lot of continually looping information - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

Just brightness information would be too simple, I dare say. These could be filters, phase shifters, "bit crushers" ... all at once

Of course, I don't know how a scanner works - for example, if it only read perfectly parallel lines.