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Building an Unattended Computer Presentation?
hastenslowly asks: "I'm a member of a non-profit Association restoring a 1920's gas station, here in the midwest, for National Historic Register status. I'd like to provide an 24/7 'unattended' audio (visual) presentation for visitors using an 'el cheapo' computer, monitor, and mouse. I'd like to connect the entire thing to the doorbell which, when triggered, will start the presentation. Can anyone steer me to some hardware, software (for whatever OS), programming, newsgroup or any other source of info, so I don't re-invent the wheel when I do this?"
Make sure that the mouse has a long cord (so it can be dragged to the left side of the keyboard), or you have some sort of mouselike device (trackball/etc) mounted in the center in front of the keyboard. Otherwise, it is useless to anyone who is left-handed.
Also, something that reboots when it fails would be good. Otherwise, you'll have Blue Screen of Death, Guru (Amiga equivalent) or similar screens eventually.
Macro media's website
Author once and deploy anywhere with Director MX 2004, the proven multimedia tool for building rich content and applications for CDs, DVDs, kiosks, and the Internet.
Pretty much the standard for doing Kiosks since the early 90's.
might be something like a very stripped down win2k running a fire and forget powerpoint, or media file on a loop, with a parted out mouse hooked up to the "doorbell" to register a single left-click to start it off.
Do you even need a computer? If this presentation is not interactive, it could be recorded to tape and put in one of those video-display systems like they have had in hardware stores and Sears for years and years.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Here's a helpful illustration to get you started with your doorbell-mouse-computer device. Also see this one
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Connect the doorbell via opto coupler / relais or similar to a key on an old keyboard. Use an application that can restart a presentation when a single key is pressed. For example, Mozilla reloads the current page when F5 is pressed, so do Opera and the IE. Set a local html page as homepage, containing a Flash or similar presentation. Connect the doorbell interface to F5. Make the browser start when the OS starts. For Win9x, place a shortcut to the browser into %windir%\start menu\startup.
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
What options are there for multi-platform multi-media presentations other than Macromedia?
Is there any open source solution?
I would look at the products from http://akman.com/, they make solid state video and audio players for just this type of thing.
Well, you could go down to some used computer shop and pick up a $50 Pentium or 486 PC with Windows 95 on it, and a cheap 14" sub-$50 SVGA monitor, and put one of these combos on there. As long as you've got those minimum specs, you should be able to do any of these. Except for #3, which requires much beefier hardware.
1) Powerpoint ($$)
2) OpenOffice (Free) with either its Impress component, or Impress plus its built-in Flash movie (SWF) exporter (for which you will need the plugin, which is free) plus Mozilla (Free)
3) Flash development software ($$$) + Flash Plugin (Free) + Mozilla (Free) - note that this would require a much beefier system probably costing $300 or more.
So, you can do this for less than $100. That's about as cheap as you're going to get unless you do the VCR+TV idea someone else had.
Sorry about mentioning Powerpoint, but it's cheaper than Flash Studio for your purpose. Although, why would you use either of those when you can use OpenOffice for free?
The choice is up to you - hopefully my info will be useful in making that decision.
Use this X-10 module to interface to the computer easily. You could roll your own at a lower cost, but this is really easy off-the-shelf method.
For the interface, you could have it fire up an mpeg/divx player, run a flash-based presentation, or run an Impress slideshow. All of the above should work on Windows, MacOS, *BSD, or Linux equally.
You might find the best X-10 software for Linux and *BSD, however.
Opera's "kiosk mode" is intended for just such uses. You get all the benefits of a web browser (links you can select, etc.) and it's neatly and easily secured against general use.
And they have a donation program for worthy causes, so the price might wind up being US$0.00
Have you considered the use of Macromedia Director?
Director has a pile of extensions to allow it to receive input from external apps -- serial port, X-10, etc. It's also much more suited to presentation work than, say, HTML or Powerpoint.
Just use an X-10 contact receiver to your existing doorbell, wire up your Mac/PC/Linux box with a reveiver and software and set your system's macros to emulate keypresses or launch the presentation from a black screen.
The guys above who said just rig an old keyboard's key to start / restart a presentation on a keypress have a great idea as well -- not as elegant, but way cheaper and easier.
I'll be donating a 50 or 90 MHz, 210 MB, floppy-based laptop and 15" monitor, but as far as commercial presentation 'authoring' software, DVD burners, . . I don't think I can justify the extra cost for this one project. Basically my initial thought was something like using simple, freeware WAV/MP3 players and/or a (*.jpg) 'slide slow' programs under DOS, Win95, . . . (gasp, I apologize) with 'batch' files/macros, C/Basic language programs, . . . (I'm really showing my age :-) looping on a 'screen-saver program' until a mouseclick/keypress starts the audio (visual) presentation.
I DO appreciate everyone's replies, will delve into every one of them, and will keep everyone posted.
And as they say in 'Ol Time Radio, "Please keep those cards and letters coming !"
Regards.
P.S. And AtariAmarok, thank you for alerting me to the ANL work. I worked for them some decades ago and I'll have to write the DOE a nasty letter for wasting our taxpayer dollars by not commercializing/'productizing' it yet. :-)
Try Revolution. It's like Macromedia Director, but it's available for Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS, Mac OS X, AIX, Solaris, SunOS, HP UX and SGI Irix
Most museums and galleries have been doing this sort of thing for years. I'd suggest contacting whatever similar groups exist in your city.
In particular there are probably any number of multimedia artists that have been doing this sort of thing with varying levels of interactivity.
One of our friends, Andra McCartney, just finished a gallery installation using a Mac, midi, and controller to handle video and audio for an interactive and unattended installation about the Lachine Canal outside Montreal.
She also installed speakers and a subwoofer inside of a hairdryer to good effect.
Three Squirrels
Just found this http://www.dmb-ergonomics.com/footmouse.htm for connecting the doorbell pushbutton.
It always amazes me that people think computers are the solution to everything. In this case, you're just making device that can only be maintained by experts, and is likely to break down due to abuse by every little kiddie who can push a button. DVD players are ubiquitous and cheap, and any idiot could replace it when it dies of old age.
Skip the computer. Create a video presentation on a DVD, use DVD Studio Pro or anything you like. Get a cheapo Apex DVD player. You can set the player to autorepeat your video, or put it in a box and rig a little button with a mechanical link to hit the Play button to play on demand.
Note that good DVD authoring software like DVDSP2 can use still photos with audio, as well as video. This is a lot more straightforward than the previous suggestions like Macromedia Director, which is more designed for highly interactive kiosks, not straight-through video presentations.
Take a look at Scala, it's exactly what you need. If you can get your hands on an older version, you won't need anything more than a Pentium or Pentium 2.
Make your presentation a bunch of images, put them in a directory then use a screen saver to roll through them, no keyboard / mouse required, and you get fancy effects for free! Be sure to lock the screen or better yet, unplug the keyboard and mouse after you turn the screen saver on.
I used a CD based linux distro (i believe knoppix) when I setup a similar system a while back. The images were stored on a CD in a second CD drive.
Anyway, set the PC in the window, and walk away....
-MS2k
If you decide to use a computer for it, you might want to have something like PcAnywhere (or something similar) running so you could remote into it if there is a problem. You'd probably want something like this to automate your keystrokes/mouse clicks. And something like this might work for daily maintenance and scheduled shutdowns.
I imagine you could pretty easily take apart the mouse and take the wires hooked to left click and wire them to a door bell, then record the macro in that program mentioned above to do whatever you need to start the video/flash/ppt presentation.
"And The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth" --Jeff Darlington
One of my constraints is that I'm working 'on the cheap', and a DVD player and TV solution would be more elegant but that would mean buying those and also a DVD burner and (commercial) authoring software. *If* we were to get any money from the Feds for the station restoration, I'm sure they'd want to see it spent on the roof, floor, wiring, . . . repairs.
Since the audio (visual) presentation would be available 24/7, one of my other constraints is that I think I'll have to pay attention to preventing phospor 'burn-in' of the monitor. My thought is run a random screen-saver (even all black) until someone pushes a doorbell button to begin the audio (visual) slide-show presentation and then go back to the random screen saver when it's over. And I'm not quite sure how I could do that using a DVD.
The AutoHotKey software looks interesting since it would ease automation using a WinDoze OS.
Thanks again to All
This would somewhat kill the "on-demand" angle though, since a tape isn't instant-seek the way a DVD or video files is. You could probably accomplish this with a DVD, or even a VCD. I've seen cheap MP3/VCD mplayers on ebay for under $30... in fact I own one and it has a decent picture.
Shouldn't be too hard to rewire the controls to a timed "power-on" circuit (timed to power off after presentation length), and maybe some chapters so that you could skip through sections.
With a computer you could go that extra step though, and have different files selectable from a menu... since many people probably wouldn't want *all* information but might find interest in specific topics (then it's semi-interactive).