Building A Museum Listening Station? 251
Anonymous Coward writes "I am building a museum exhibit which requires the use of 10 listening stations. These should be able to play back a few minutes of audio, should have an obvious Play button (and no other buttons: less confusion for the elderly and less to break for the kids), and should be able to work with an absolute minimum of supervision for three months of constant use. There are fancy ready-made solutions to this problem, but at $350, it would be too expensive to buy 10 of them. Similarly, there are cheap solutions ($20 CD player + $15 headphones), but this is probably not reliable or user friendly enough for this exhibit. Does the Slashdot community have any suggestions for how to build a reasonably inexpensive museum listening station?"
Go MP3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget that... Get with the program! (Score:5, Funny)
Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a PC with some software might work great but unless someone is going to code the software for him i doubt it will work.
Re:Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:3, Funny)
Let's find someone stupid enough to cheaply write a brand new program (but not too stupid of course, we don't want badly designed and buggy code now, do we?).
Then we take a not too expensive PC and stick a couple of USB expansion cards (not too expensive either) in it and hope it doesn't get unstable -- which isn't a problem really; seeing that we have a single point of failure here, if the system fails we know WHERE it failed, right?
Then we pull USB cables criss-cross over the whole room up t
Re:Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:2, Informative)
Look here [iweb.net.au].
Re:Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:2, Informative)
Pro's: easy to maintain, easy to update, minimal cost.
Con's: If you don't know what you are doing it coul
Re:Why not one that does 10 stations or more? (Score:2, Insightful)
It, (like Kontakt) can stream audio files directly from the hard drive, eliminating the need for a lot of RAM. You would need an audio card with 10 outputs, however, like the parent poster said. You could get multiple cards if you need to have more outputs. Maybe U
Mp3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Toss in a cheap pair of speakers and a power supply and mount the entire unit in a box with a single button.
Load the audio you want as the only track and it should work just fine.
Re:Mp3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mp3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mp3 (Score:5, Interesting)
But you wouldn't connec the button to the play/pause button, that would be silly. You'd connect it to the next track button, and just leave it on repeat with that as the only track.
Re:Mp3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Quality of CD players - Speaking from experience (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Quality of CD players - Speaking from experienc (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mp3 (Score:2)
It'll stand up just fine. (Score:2, Informative)
Three months, no problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Mp3 (Score:4, Interesting)
A simply big red button with a pastic rod that pushes the play button on the CD player will do the job. this is how MANY audio kiosks are done.
have the headphones plug-in easy to replace with new headphones as they WILL get damaged.
the general public likes to damage other people's things.
and you can't get ANYTHING more reliable than a $20.00 CD player. those things are engineered well nowdays, and if the player is always sitting still and has a power wart running it. I'm betting it would outlast any custom job.
Re:Mp3 (Score:3, Interesting)
the key is to simply limit the travel of the rod.
if I slam the button with a sledge hammer but it will only let it move 1/16th of an inch, it does not matter how hard you hit it.
Yes, it does matter how hard you hit it. ... after all, if shorter distance = less possible force, then 0 distance = no force at all, right?
By your logic, he should just weld the rod to the button
Travel distance before an object strikes another object is
Re:Mp3 (Score:5, Insightful)
The only shortcoming of this simple plan is that the audio is always playing.
Re:Mp3 (Score:2)
Re:Mp3 (Score:2)
A variable bitrate encoder will allow for a small increase in file size for the perios of silence.
Re:Mp3 (Score:2, Interesting)
SO, if you have one track of the audio, and one track of silence (only has to be a few seconds long, as it just repeats), set to single track repeat, then hitting the button would alternately play silence or the audio.
Radio-based solution (Score:4, Interesting)
So essentially, what you could do if you want to do it on the cheap is to get several low-power FM transmitters (that won't emit outside the building, presumably, I don't know how the FCC would like that) and lend cheap FM radios with preset stations to receive your broadcasts, with a little "program" sheet, perhaps glued to the receivers.
Just an idea...
Re:Radio-based solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Druids Man (Score:2)
How long since you've been there? (Score:3, Insightful)
they are solid state mp3 player type devices...
you enter a track# and it plays it from internal memory... and they are not cheap devices at all...
Re:Radio-based solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Directed sound (Score:5, Insightful)
speak up sonny! (Score:5, Funny)
Have you considered a Victrola?
Build a box. (Score:4, Interesting)
Alternatively you could get a boom box (more stable) or a flash stick mp3 player (no moving parts and smaller).
You'd want to make it so that if you press the button a second time it resets the timer on the light and rewinds and plays again.
Use a computer (Score:2, Informative)
Hope this helps
Listening posts. (Score:5, Funny)
Get a Delta 1010 10 output sound card.
Install Linux.
Write a patch in Pure-Data modular that plays a wave back on a keypress.
Buy a load of switches.
Wire them to the PC's keyboard num-pad.
Breadboard a load of those little IC 2 Watt power amp chips to drive the headphons.
Done!
Cost... around $1000.
That started as a cheap and simple solution and got kinda more complicated as I typed. Sorry.
Re:Listening posts. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Listening posts. (Score:3, Informative)
Thinking about it, if you had a PC with 5 PCI slots you could put 5 Soundblaster Lives in it. They are about $20 each.
That would give ten mono headphone feeds off the sound card's lil heaphone amps.
I don't think anyone has tried this under ALSA yet... but in theory it should work.
One interesting thing about using Pure-Data and a
PC for this is that you could collect statistics. You could also do real time effects, or announcements that would go to to all the headphones at once.
It wou
Re:Listening posts. (Score:2)
Re:Listening posts. (Score:2)
$350 ? (Score:2, Funny)
Build one yourself from old computers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Have an applescript running and make it play the audio you need with quicktime whenever any key is pressed. Simple, cheap, and besides old macs you could use ANY old computer. I mention the macs only because I know those particular ones are common, cheap, MacOS 7.5.3 is a Free(beer) download, and you have the audio recording and playback hardware all there.
Re:Build one yourself from old computers. (Score:2, Informative)
Old telephone handsets (Score:5, Interesting)
As for players, look for closeout MP3 players - you could wire a switch across the play button. Another thing to look for, if teh duration of teh sound is short enough, are these "voice on a chip" thingies used in greetin cards - you might find one with enough memory for your needs at a specialty electronics parts house.
Good luck
Have it start as you pick up the phone! (Score:2)
Then start the recording with a few signals as if you are waiting for someone to pick up. Then start your presentation.
Or skip the signals, maybe that's cheezy. In any event. Everyone will understand how do handle that equipment.
The "interface" can't get any simpler than that and it has a nice feel to it too.
Maybe you can hook it up to one of those really cheap solid state mp3 players that everyone ke
Oh, also, follow the advice of bobdotorg's post (Score:2)
That works great with this interface because it doesn't matter if the recording is running continously as will be restarted when someone picks up the phone.
It is not like a button and a headset where they will put on the headset first and be confused by the recording before they hit the button.
Re:Oh, also, follow the advice of bobdotorg's post (Score:2)
I've also seen demo stands in CD stores, which has a metal contact for the headphones; picking up the headphones cuts the circuit and turns the machine on.
Re:Oh, also, follow the advice of bobdotorg's post (Score:2)
The play button is often also a pause button.
If the phone is on the hook and the player is paused, the player is put in play mode when the phone is off the hook it will start play where it left off the last time someone hung up. So therefor you will also have to either hit the skip forward button or the stop button and then the play button.
There are many different combinations you can do, but the only solution that I can think of where you have to hit only one button is if the player is playing continousl
CD player works great (Score:5, Informative)
I'd invest in a large sheath that will cover and protect the headphone cables and invest in heavy duty headphones. Probably total cost would be about
10 x 15.00 150 for the CD players
20 x
10 x 20.00 200 for good sturdy headphones that can stand the abuse
20 x 6.00 120 for heavy duty switches to wire into said CD players
75 miscellaneous parts, wires, drill bits wood etc for you stations.
Total cost 553 or their abouts. Remember, don't skimp on bad switches that can't take a pounding. Also get your museum's tax ID for your purchases so most places you don't have to pay sales tax for a non-profit.
Problems - most CD players the play is also a "pause" button. My old CD player here isn't - so if you can find them with play and pause as seperate buttons, your golden. Also soldering the switches on the landing pads requires some patience - but if I can do it - any one can.
cluge
Re: (Score:2)
Re:CD player works great (Score:3, Insightful)
My 2 cents (Score:2)
There was an exhibit near me not too long ago, and they gave out headphones. The thing was though, all the headphones were listening to the same feed. This was a problem because you'd have one massive croud listening to the same feed and going en masse to each exhibit, it was a bit of a clusterfuck. So you'll need several different feeds to prevent a logjam like that.
Funny, I just had to build something like this. (Score:5, Informative)
Our solution cost about $60.00 with the wood for the case, the CD player was bought at best buy, and has been running flawlessly for 6 months now.
-GReg
Been there, done that (Score:5, Insightful)
I use to work for Virgin Entertainment Group, Inc. (the Virgin Megastores in the US) and other retailers where listening stations were involved.
Really you have to consider how many people will comoe through the exhibit, average age, how long the exhibit will run etc. to understand what solution is best or to really cost it out.
So if you go with $15 dollar headphones, will they stand up to being put on, taken off, people tugging on them, etc. or will you be replacing one set a day due to breakage? This naturally means each set doesn't cost $15, but each station costs somewhat higher than that. You really need to think along these lines to compare costs. Especially given your condition of minimal oversight; that means people will be more inclined to abuse them (or rather less inhibited to, and yes even the queit museum crowd will abuse equipment as we saw in our classical departments.)
You could source the sound from a single computer, but you would need multiple output channels (probably multiple sound cards) and software to support it. Other than the pre-packaged solutions, I'm not so familiar with what's available in this category.
If you want to go cheaper could you not use actual speakers, with partitions and volume settings such that there isn't too much bleed over from one sound space to another? Disney actually puts this same kind of concept to effective use on many of their themepark rides. This would eliminate the 'touch' element which usually cause headphones to die in these situations. Of course, not seeing the exhibit, it might not be practical.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:2)
Or, if you're a Virgin Megastore, just get the most painful, uncomfortable, and poorest sound quality headphones available, and then no-one will want to use them anyway
Re:Been there, done that (Score:2)
Re:Been there, done that (Score:2)
Cones of silence (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap. (Score:2)
I think this is supposed to be more along the lines of a listening booth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap. (Score:2)
Hmm....good points...I guess I never thought about it being more than a play button and some cheap speakers...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Before moving to NC, I spent 7 1/2 years with a large fire/rescue department in Florida. The radios we had - Motorola's - were worse then the old analog systems we used when I first started. As in you couldn't key up, the radios
Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap. (Score:2, Insightful)
The phone analogy is good, but backwards. This situation seems more akin to installing a new payphone in your living room, rather than using a cheap phone from Wal-Mart. The museum in question cannot afford to waste an extra few thousand dollars on features, reliability, and personnel that it doesn't need. They are asking Slashdotters for free help over the Internet, after all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on your definition of "build" (Score:2, Informative)
Brute force option: 10 used PCs + Linux (Score:2)
Of course, you'll probably want to hide the boxes because they'll look ugly.
Analog Solution -- Radio Station Carts (Score:2)
As a lot (if not all) of radio stations have phased out their cart systems in favor of digital stuff, I'd think there'd be a lot
Big red button? (Score:5, Funny)
Save the red button for emergencies, launching weapons and (if you are a super villain) initiating self destruct sequences.
Over 20 Years in the Museum Exhibit field (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm... (Score:2)
1 or more PCs with multiple sound cards would be doable, but you might have issues like storing them (large lockable locations, with adequate cooling, noise issues, etc), noise on long headphone runs, lots of software & wires to rig, etc.
As you mentioned, multiple $20 CD players would be doable, but the mechanics inside might be iffy. More expensive players would probably be required. L
Gee, I'd like to help, but I'm old and confused... (Score:3, Funny)
POTS phones, old = 10 line PBX, voice mail (Score:2, Informative)
I'm thinking of the same thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is exactly what we did (Score:2, Informative)
1.) Set of powered speakers. We're using the Edirol MA-10's because everything is self contained. There's no AC brick, and they come with all the necessary cables. Very good audio quality.
2.) CD Drive in an external case. The simpler the case, the better. It's only job is to supply power to the drive. If you can get one that has its own power socket, so much the better. You can just plug the speakers int
Flash memory MP3 player (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can find one that "boots up" quickly from power-off, you could wire up your "play" button to do two things: briefly interrupt the supply of power to the player, and press the "play" button on the player. Interrupting the power would ensure that the player is not playing when the "play" button is pressed; therefore the player would not pause if the button were hit again, but would rather start playing over again from the beginning. (I think this is more elegant than the proposal to make it loop forever and wire your pushbutton to the next track button.)
As for a way to listen, someone already suggested an old telephone handset, and I don't think you can beat that idea. There are plenty of sturdy newer telephone handsets, but you might want to put a security cable on them so people don't just disconnect them from the phone cord and walk away. (That's assuming you use the phone cord to hook them up to the listening station; you could open them up to wire something directly, but if you bought the phone, you also bought the cord that connects the handset so why not use it?) If you can get 10 handsets from pay phones, that would of course be perfect; those are designed to be tough.
I thought about proposing you put a speaker inside some kind of protective enclosure, basically making your own "sound stick", but I think a telephone handset is a much better solution.
If you could do the "parabolic speaker" suggestion, that is also a good idea. I've been to music stores where you stand under a parabolic speaker, and you can clearly hear the audio; and someone a few feet away can't hear it. Here's a web page by someone who built one of these.
http://syrinxpc.com/speaker.html [syrinxpc.com]
steveha
Re:Flash memory MP3 player (Score:2)
You will need to put in a small delay between hitting "stop" and "play". You would have needed a delay between cycling power and hitting "play" anyhow.
steveha
A similar device, maybe? (Score:4, Informative)
It was fairly simple. The only moving parts, aside from the displays, was the "start" switch. Nothing to break, no motors to worry over, no lenses to fret about. Radio Shack has these chips, too, so you can get them fairly cheaply, and they work quite well (years ago, I used one of these to "hack" into a "closed" 440mhz repeater near McHenry, by digitally recording the "activation" sequence on the input side, and wiring the playback through the microphone of the "pirate" radio. Pretty slick, if I must say so myself
Re:A similar device, maybe? (Score:2)
Based on what most museums already use... (Score:2)
hmpf. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's rather rude. There are plenty of older people perfectly confortable with compuers, and at least as many young luddites.
Some Problems with the Problem Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it can be done on the cheap. (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster (Score:2)
From an old exhibit designer... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.happcontrols.com/
They sell video game / amusement parts, and we used to buy all of our controls from them. They just don't break, even with a hundred eight-year-olds slamming their fists into them for six hours each day.
As for the electronics themselves, there's a right way and there's a cheap way. The right way is to use something like the Radio Design Labs FP-MR1 [rdlnet.com], which is a bulletproof digital message repeater. It's exactly what you want, but it's $225 each. The cheap way is to try and find a CD player or MP3 player that can boot up right into behaving the way you want -- either repesting all the time with the big button wired to the "forward" button or playing then pausing, with the big button wired to the "play" button. Unfortunately, it's likely on the CD player side that the only players that will do what you want will be pro models, and will cost several hundred dollars each.
Good luck!
Flash player ideas (Score:2)
- get one that can have one of those headphone cable remotes and you wouldn't even have to hack up the player to connect a play button
- either get one with a DC input, your wire a supply to the batter compartment.
- don't use headphones (if at all possible). You will definately have them breaking on you.
- make sure everything is mounted securely. you'd be surprised at how easily things can get shaken loose. use loc-tight and lock wash
Is $3500 *really* too expensive? (Score:3, Interesting)
I get the impression that this is sort of a "if your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail" situation, where the hammer is technology, to the exclusion of considering other options like simply getting the $3500 and getting a rugged, public-tested solution.
This is a potentially high-traffic, high-abuse type of display (just visit a museum with that already uses that $3500 audio system (I've seen them before) and observe how school children (ab)use them! :-o. I'm sure the "total cost of ownership" of the $3500 solution will be lower than anything cobbled togethered - how soon will you need to make a repair? How much will the capital and labor costs (even donated) be to do repairs? Will the lower investment solution be a waste anyway if no one can used it when it breaks even other day/week?
Any legitimate museum I've seen, even those running on a "shoe string" budget, has a donor's list that could be approached ("help us with this expense and we'll put up a plaque with your name as donor next to it"). If doing this is out of the comfort zone for those running the museum, the museum is already doomed anyway.
JG
Re:Lazy you - Uh... Screw you. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh right, you have ALL the answers...
How does a comment like this get modded as 'Insightful'? C'mon people - USE YOUR HEADS!
Re:Lazy you (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aside, why do people so often get pissed about the ask slashdot sections? Google does an excellent job for most things, but if you're considering building some project or doing something technically interesting google doesn't always have links to all the pitfalls or the interesting storys that go along with a project from someone with experience in that area. These often end up being the most interesting threads, IMHO.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All about user interface (Score:5, Informative)
for 30 dollars complete with actual wire terminals etc.
try http://electronickits.com/kit/complete/audi/ck121
link [electronickits.com]
Re:All about user interface (Score:2)
Radio Shack used to sell a chip that did that. I don't think it was 90 seconds of recording. I've been searching for about 10 minutes, and didn't run across anything. Of course, I was looking for something that handled more time.
It'd still probably be cheaper and easier to buy 10 little portable CD players in bulk somewhere, and rig up a little rod to hit the "play" button.
Re:All about user interface (Score:2)
Re:easy (Score:2, Funny)
[snip]
For example, I have taught my purchased child to masturbate when he hears the words "clam chowder". It really is a great party trick.
Note this guy's SlashDot ID.
This is what years of reading SlashDot will do to ya'. Consider yourselves warned, kiddos.
Re:easy (Score:2)
Re:single chip voice record/playback chips (Score:2)
single chip voice record/playback chips are realy cheep and simple,
Yeah, but what if he wants to play sounds other than bird noises?
Broken PC Boards? (Score:2)
Use a regular cd player/headphones, then put a board over it, put a big plastic play button in a hole in the center of the board. Then you extend the button so that it will hit play on the cd player.
Warning, though. If someone pounds a button really hard, then they'll crack the CD player's PC board.
Preferable: disassemble the CD player and put an arcade-machine pushbutton in parallel with the existing button.
Alternatively: make a button with limited travel, where the force is absorbed by the case. Use a