Building A Museum Listening Station?

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?"

Comments

Go MP3?

[leetdan]

You should be able to pick up an older solid-state MP3 player for next to nothing. Wire it up with a DC adapter, connect the Play button, and either use headphones or amp it to a speaker.

Why not one that does 10 stations or more?

[MR_60]

Instead of 10 seperate stations, why not have one system that runs all the booths. It could be a PC with ten seperate sets of USB headphones, and some specially configured software. I'm sure this wouldn't be too difficult for someone to develop...

Mp3

[Dward]

You can find 16Mb mp3 players for about $20.
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

[Goldfinger7400]

Yes, you could even use the CD players you mentioned, and just jury-rig a big red button to start it. Your problem is easily solved with a little electronics tinkering (RadioShack probably has everything you need.)

Re:Mp3

[Goldfinger7400]

Ammendment: You wouldn't want people to be able to pause the presentation, so you'd need to build some sort of delay circuit into the button. So, after it is pressed, you can't send another signal to the play/pause button till after you know it would be done.

Re:Mp3

[bobdotorg]

Have the MP3 player repeating the single track, with the big red button attached to the 'skip forward' or 'skip ahead' track button.

The only shortcoming of this simple plan is that the audio is always playing.

Re:Mp3

[davebarz]

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

[Lumpy]

you dont need any electronics tinkering...

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.

Radio-based solution

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You could do what they do at the Stonehenge site in the UK : they have a cheapo radio receiver thingy, and buttons to tune in to one of the several languages they offer. I assume they have a base station that broadcasts on several frequencies.

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...

Directed sound

[deanj]

Fork out the bucks to put a few of the directed sound systems in. You won't have stolen equipment, and you'll serve the same purpose. Getting something that patrons will handle will cost you a lot more long term.

speak up sonny!

[Alien Being]

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

Have you considered a Victrola?

Build a box.

[natmsincome.com]

I'd get some nice headphones but not to nice (people break them.) and the CD player BUT put a box around the CD player and rig it so that it has a big red button on the front that users press. Time the audio and make the red button stay red for that amount of time.

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.

Listening posts.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Listening posts.

[Chordonblue]

Couldn't a multiple output sound card like an Audigy be used? God knows there's a lot of outputs on there - even more were you to use mono sound and split left/right.

Re:Listening posts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea. That would work.

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 would bring the cost down to around $300. (A delta 1010 is overkill for this job.)

Re:All about user interface

[MoonBuggy]

Get arcade machine buttons - they are available for a few $ on eBay, usually sold to people building MAME cabinets. Since they're designed to withstand years of drink spills, cig burns and general abuse I'm sure they'd be fine in a museum for a few months. You should be able to find a bag of 10 for less than $50. Wire them into the play connections on cheap 16MB MP3 players as mentioned above, hook up some el-cheapo portable active speakers, seal it all into a box with a power lead coming out the back and you're good to go.

Build one yourself from old computers.

[danamania]

Go to goodwill, and grab some mac LCs. $5 for the LC, $5 for the monitor, and set them up behind a box. something simple, anything. Then have one huge "play" button that when pressed, hits Any Key on the keyboard.

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.

Old telephone handsets

[Registered Coward v2]

For the listening end, why not try to find 10 of teh old heavy duty Ma bell telephone handsets? You could run 2 wires to the speaker inside of it (coiled if you want to be fancy) and have a rugged earpiece. alternatively, you might be able to hack some of the cheaper wall plug phones sold in stores today.

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

CD player works great

[cluge]

Portable CD players can be picked up for 13-19 dollars in some stores. Burn a CD for each one that contains a single track. You can get video game style buttons on ebay or around the internet (http://www.moneymachines.com/cabinetparts.html). These heavy duty switches are pretty simple to use, and wiring them into the portable CD's shouldn't be a challenge (works on my old radio shack player). 2 buttons, play, and stop/station.

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 .40 8 to buy and burn 20 CD's (spares just in case)
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:Lazy you

[Black_Logic]

I guess you were probably just trolling, but don't you think that's a little bit ridiculous? Assuming that this guy is getting paid for this, which he could certainly not be (i.e. volunteering for some non-profit organization) regardless, he obviously followed the guidelines for asking a public, technical forum a question. Polite, showed that he'd done the required google research.

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.

Funny, I just had to build something like this.

[GhengisCohen]

For the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico California, I had to build a listening station that would let the user put on head phones, and be able to choose tracks for quite a lot of music More than a standard audio CD could handle (50+ tracks). I had a budget of $75.00. I purchased a portable CD player that could handle MP3 CD's. The issue was which one. Since I needed to know tracks, and I wanted the title displayed I was limited a little, and I needed buttons that could be isolated. I found a rio player of some sort (don't remember the exact model) and I built a box out of maple (to match the other displays), the cover was a thin ( We tested tons.

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

[steve buttgereit]

Hi--

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.

Cones of silence

[pongo000]

I've been to a museum (Los Alamos) and a library (Dallas public library) that use parabolic reflectors, mounted above and pointed downwards, to generate very well-defined sound patterns. They're pretty amazing: You hear nothing if you are standing just outside the "pattern." The other plus side is that you can use a low-output speaker, since the reflector will "amplify" the sound by focusing it to a small footprint.

No, it can't be done on the cheap.

[fmaxwell]

I've worked on audio for museum exhibits and am currently doing work for an audio tour that will be presented at a prestigious museum in Washington, D.C. There are a few firms involved in this kind of work and the equipment is expensive because it is made in small quantities and is extremely rugged. For the portable audio tour devices, there are industrial-grade, sophisticated charging racks and the individual audio devices have buttons and features so that visitors can see the exhibits in any order and learn more about individual stops (think "hyperlink").

Using consumer-grade CD players, MP3 players, and headphones for a museum exhibit is like replacing a pay phone outside of a convenience store with a $10 phone from Walmart. If it was possible to put on an exhibit with $50 worth of equipment per person, then the big companies like Acoustiguide, Antenna Audio, and Tour-Mate would be driven out of business by cheap competitors.

Why do people assume that anything expensive must be overpriced? Sometimes things are expensive to buy because they are expensive to make. And often they are still as cheap as they can be for their intended use. Police departments and rescue squads pay a lot of money for Motorola and Icom walkie-talkies and in-vehicle radios, but it doesn't mean that equipping police cars and ambulances with $40 Cobra CB radios and giving cops $50/pair Uniden FRS/GMRS walkie talkies would be a clever move.

Re:No, it can't be done on the cheap.

[fmaxwell]

I call troll. Why can't he do it cheap and himself?

Because the ruggedized equipment needed is not available at a low price -- and producing it entails plastics molding, machining, design, testing, prototyping, etc.

Let the exhibit start with this and then upgrade as they go.

1. You are mistaking initial purchase price for total cost. If they have a dozen consumer-grade headphones and three go out per day due to breakage and theft, the real cost is huge. That's not unrealistic with kids, people used to industrial-quality equipment in public places, etc. The commercial stuff with the big ticket price is less costly than consumer stuff in the real world -- especially when you factor in costs for museum staff to maintain the fragile consumer stuff.

2. A museum is unlikely to get much money to upgrade an exhibit that's already open. It's not like a start-up business. A bunch of consumer-quality headphones, many of which are broken at any given time, is unlikely to generate enough income to ever fund proper equipment.

Just becuase something is from a name-brand company doesnt mean that he can't make it for cheaper himself.

It has nothing to do with the brand name. It has to do with the cost of manufacturing ruggedized audio devices in low quantities. There are no headphones at Best Buy, Circuit City, or Fry's that are going to hold up to kids yanking on cords, people dropping them multiple times per day, the cord being pulled tight, and so forth.

It may not come with whiz-bang feature X but if it gets the job done, stop complaining how a wal-mart phone will put pay-phone companies out of business

It won't get the job done and I'm not complaining about anything. Put a Walmart phone outside of a convenience store in place of a real pay phone and it will be broken, vandalized, or stolen with 12 hours. Same thing if you put consumer-grade headphones and CD players (or MP3 players) to handle a museum exhibition.

Big red button?

[Chuck Chunder]

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.

Over 20 Years in the Museum Exhibit field

[MajorK0ng]

I was a curator and builder for over 20 years, 11 1/2 years in a childern's museum (yes some people don't ever wise up.) Now I'm in IT not much of an improvement. Just pays a liitle better. Anyway I only have one suggestion. Spend the money and buy the equipment. Hell yes it is expensive, but by the time you locate the armored cable, the heavy duty controllors, the heavy duty buttons, so on and so forth you won't have saved that much money. The right manufacturers have been making theses items over 40 years they know what they are doing. unless you can produce the boards yourself and program the digital chips which what I have done in the past it isn't worth the effort to do it in house trust me I have been there.

Did anyone else think?

[squiggleslash]

(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!"

Re:All about user interface

[AmericanInKiev]

I believe you can find sound memory boards -

for 30 dollars complete with actual wire terminals etc.

try http://electronickits.com/kit/complete/audi/ck1212 .htm

link

A similar device, maybe?

[MsWillow]

A few years ago, Vikki was tagged to create the animatronics control for our gem club's display case. Besides running the various pieces of equipment, it had to run in synch with the audio track. To minimize the possibility of breakage, she used a pair of inexpensive amplified speakers, driven by a PIC-based microcontroller, with the audio being handled by one of the solid-state programmable "tape recorder" chips.

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 ;) ).

Forget that... Get with the program!

[jonfromspace]

Hire 10 Indian programmers to recite the audio on demand.

Some Problems with the Problem Statement

[mmurphy000]

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.

Various questions and food for thought:

• Don't forget the money value of time. Unless all staff working on this project are volunteers, staff time costs money, and the time spent fussing creating some custom solution may blow all your apparent cost savings on the equipment.
• You don't indicate what the exact scope of your between-$35-and-$350 problem is. For example, are you including a stand and mounting hardware in that budget? The more you gotta spend on those things, the less you have for the smarts.
• Does "minimum of supervision" include staff time to turn things off? If not, are power draw or battery charging be included in that $35-350 budget?
• Are you sure you need a Play button? If the audio is short enough, go with what other posters have suggested and do continuous-loop, with a sign indicating that the audio repeats every N minutes. I've been to museums that have taken that approach.
• Are you better served by finding donors for the $3,500 for the commercial-grade stations than in finding a technical solution that avoids them? Heck, all you need is one sponsor per station, where you can attach a "audio content sponsored by" sign. $350 for a concrete promotional outcome should be relatively straightforward. You might even consider going with audio-related sponsors to increase your odds of getting the donation (radio stations, car audio stores, sound studios, etc.).

Yes, it can be done on the cheap.

[absurdist]

I work for the largest producer of traveling interactive exhibits for children's museums, science museums, etc... in the USA. Our traveling show on Africa just came back from a 5 year run. All of the audio was done with cheap Sony (DON'T use another brands, they don't hold up) CD players (bought refurbished, in bulk, from a Sony outlet store... check their online store as well). They were controlled by a Basic Stamp programmed so that when the play button was pressed, they pulsed a DIP reed relay which pulsed the start contacts, then timed out so that further presses wouldn't have a problem with the play/pause being on the same button. Cheap amplifiers from Radio Shack, push buttons from Happ Controls (Accept NO substitutes, no one else's are worth a damn), and either small speakers from Radio Shack or armored phone headsets from ID Tell in NYC round out the package. Burn a single audio track on each CD, assemble it in a compact box, and you're good to go. Don't try to use headphones; if you don't build your own out of armor jacketed cable and industrial ear protector headsets, they WILL NOT hold up. Total cost will be under $100 per station and the sound quality will be as good as any industrial DMR out there, while being RELIABLE and EASILY SERVICED (EXTREMELY important considerations in the museum environment). Anything involving a PC for something like this is technical overkill and simply won't hold up in the museum environment.

Quality of CD players - Speaking from experience

[s3if3R]

Last summer I built an installation that stood unsupervised for 3 months, with a soundtrack running from a portable philips cd player on repeat, 24/7. Still using the player today as walkman. Insane, totally insane. I was sure it'd break down.