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Building A Museum Listening Station?

Posted by timothy on from the use-ogg-too-but-how dept.

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?"

5 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. speak up sonny! by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Funny

    "...less confusion for the elderly..."

    Have you considered a Victrola?

  2. Listening posts. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Get a PC.
    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.

  3. Big red button? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Funny

    What is it with you people? The button should be a nice, friendly, "push me and good things will happen" green.
    Save the red button for emergencies, launching weapons and (if you are a super villain) initiating self destruct sequences.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  4. Did anyone else think? by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Funny
    (The scene, the inside of a large, barbed wire surrounded, complex of giant white "golfballs", somewhere near the coast. A man is inside one of the balls, looking at a radar screen, listening intently to his headphones.)

    Man: General! I think I hear something!

    (The man's superior arrives)

    "What is it Jenkins?"

    "It's... well, it's hard to hear, but I can just make out footsteps, on a squeaky floor. And every few seconds, there's a cough with a slight echo."

    "My ghod, it sounds like..."

    "That's what I was thinking, General, the tale-tale audio signature of a museum! Exactly what this Museum Listening Station was designed to find."

    "I'm going to have to call NORAD at once. Can you tell me anything else? Do we know what kind of museum?"

    "Negative Sir. It's a large one though. We could be looking at a Natural History Museum, or possibly one of the larger art and antiquities collections"

    "Large? Jenkins, this could mean they're preparing for a first strike! Hell, if this thing hits us, the school trips alone will decimate the entire nation! Wait right there! I'm going to get the President on the line!"

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  5. Forget that... Get with the program! by jonfromspace · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hire 10 Indian programmers to recite the audio on demand.

    --
    I am become Troll, destroyer of threads