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Using a Pocket Audio Recorder with Linux?
"The Olympus series of digital voice recorders seem to be the most popular hardware in this category, and they're cheap, but they write files in a proprietary DSS ("Digital Speech Standard") format that can't be converted under Linux. It looks like people have been wondering about this format for years, but as of today it remains inaccessible for free software users.
Solutions I've come up with are (1) to get a pocket MP3 player that can also record, like the MPIO DMG MP3 Player (expensive for my task, though, at $200); and (2) the handheld multi-track recorder, the Korg PXR-4. An ideal setup would have a headphone or speaker jack for playback, and a mic/line input so that it could be used to make digital recordings from another hardware source (like TV or radio), and used with special microphones like a parabolic mike."
I've got an IRiver MP3 player. It works with linux when its running the UMS firmware. The mic works pretty well. I use it to record meetings when my other group members can't attend meetings. Maybe be more costly than you're looking for and the storage isn't removable.
i could not think of anything clever.
My Archos JB20 Recorder works very well for this, especially with The Rockbox software. (Disclaimer: I'm on the Rockbox team.)
It is a little pricey ($175-$220US on eBay), but with everything else it does - MP3 recording and playback, text file viewing, bookmarking, and a host of others, it's well worth it. You can also get 10GB models for a little less.
The filesystem is FAT32 and it connects seamlessly to most OSs which have USB support. Most of the Rockbox team develops on Linux.
So while it may be a little more than you wanted to spend, it's a worthwhile investment!
Mattcelt
The Neuros is currently deeply discounted in preparation for the newer models coming out...
The 128MB unit is going for $150, the 20GB model is on sale for $200 and the combo bundle (128MB/20GB, etc.) is currently only $230.
I bought my combo set for $343, and that was after both a $50 sale discount & a $25 Linux user's discount.
I don't mean to sound like a salesman, but this is a great deal!
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
As already mentioned by Mattcelt, an Archos (without or preferably with Rockbox software) will do it, and will record quite a bit, given that it's recording to a hard drive.
A Sharp Zaurus will also do it, recording to a CF or MMC card.
I've got both a Zaurus and An Archos, and will mention that the Zaurus internal microphone may not be superior to the Archos internal microphone, but the Archos internal will pick up the (intermittant) sounds of the hard drive spinning.
The Zaurus, of course, uses a Linux file system; the Archos with Rocbox a FAT32 filesystem. The Archos records to mp3; I've forgotten what the Zaurus records to. Both allow you to trade audio quality for file size, however.
The Zaurus allows one-touch recording in its defualt out-of-the-box configuration, which can be handy if you plan on surreptitious or spur-of-the-moment recording. However, it's also very easy to inadvertantly record, and find you've used up most of your RAM-disk doing so.
Also, like Mattcelt, I'm (pereferally) on the Rockbox team (or at least mentioned in the credits).
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I think a couple other folks have mentioned it, but I would look into a PDA. A lot of them have SD slots.
Palm
A PalmOS PDA would probably be the best option from a number of standpoints (e.g., it just works usually), but I don't know how hard it would be to find an app that would record to a format you could get at easily from your desktop. I know that a Palm device will leave an SD card in the usual FAT-based format that you buy them in, which would be readable by Linux. However, even if you tell the app to record to the SD card (rather than internal memory), I imagine it'll be in a Palm database rather than a flat mp3 or ogg file.
Zaurus
I'm sure a couple folks are plugging the Zaurus, because it runs Linux. All of the Linux Zaurus models do have a SD card slot, but only one of them- the SL-5600- has a built-in mic, which is pretty crappy. The SL-5600 is pretty expensive, going for $450-500 depending on where you get it. Quite a bit more than a PDA with similar hardware and capabilities should cost. The Linux Tax, I guess. If you're willing to have a potentially fragile microphone hanging out of the dual mic/headphone jack, you could always use a hack. That way, you could get one of the cheaper SL-5500 models- up to $300 cheaper than the SL-5600 for a machine that is about as good. E.g., the CPU in the 5600 is 400 MHz, but only a very, very wee bit faster (if at all) than the 206 MHz CPU in the 5500. (think of a 100 MHz 486 vs 100 MHz Pentium)
The built-in software records as WAV files, but since it runs Linux, I'm sure you could port an mp3 recorder if you're willing to invest the time in writing code for a Qtopia GUI, or some other kind of interface that doesn't require you to type something to record a note.
WinCE/PocketPC
The third real option is a PocketPC device. A lot of Linux weenies are too bigoted to consider it, but if you're just looking for a solution to your problem you shouldn't overlook it.
One I'd reccomend is the Dell Axim X5 Basic, which can be had for around $200. Specs like you'd expect- 300 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM (being increased in a new model, not sure if its out yet), and dual SD and CF slots. Since it writes to the regular FAT filesystem that comes on SD and CF cards, it's just as easily read on your Linux box. There are a couple software options for recording mp3s, and a million for recording WAV files.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I've been meaning to visit my local university's library to resolve this, but since this Ask Slashdot has come up I might as well tell others what I have figured out so far.
Digital Speech Standard (DSS) is not necessarily proprietary in the sense that you or I cannot lay our hands on it. It might not be open source, but it can possibly be available for licensing from the International Voice Association (IVA) on terms that might be practically useful (see below for more on this). IVA is a joint venture between Grundig, Phillips, and Olympus. The reason I need to go to the library is because the IVA is apparently not on the Net. Go figure.
Quoting Olympus as an authoritative source:
I emailed Olympus USA Technical Support and asked them to direct me to someone who can license the spec to me, but predictably nothing useful came out of that:
Three guesses what the result was when I called a Customer Support monkey.
This guy figured out some basic encoding characteristics of the Olympus DS-3000, the model that I use. An FAQ from a New Zealand distributor lists some other characteristics like the compression ratio of the format (approximately 12:1 over WAV).
Note that apparently the encoding algorithm can only be licensed for use on hardware devices, but decoding is allowed in software. This is what I meant when I mentioned above that it might be possible to license the format on practically useful terms. For my project where I want a Linux-based DSS decoder, I don't need software encoding, so this works for me. I found this in a link on the Net somewhere, but I can't Google it up now.
This third-party product can decode DSS format files, so there is the proof that we need that the format can indeed be decoded by someone outside of the IVA founding members. This Windows-only shareware program performs all sorts of handy audio format batch conversions, but it requires the Windows-only DSS Player in order to decode DSS format files. Hopefully that means DSS Player (which can only be obtained/licensed through the purchase of an Olympus DSS recorder) can be manipulated through Windows Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) in a worst case scenario (running DSS Player from a VMware instance on Linux, and communicate between the two using some socket-based protocol).