Research into this stuff isn't just for cooks and crazies -- even Princeton has a small lab the goal of which is to experimentally gather a "better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality". It's called the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, and its web page can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
-- Martin
If you intend for people to print this stuff out, PDF is definitely the file format of choice. The size of the resulting files will largely depend on the scanning resolution and color settings you use, as well as the type of compression in the PDF.
If the lecture notes you're scanning don't contain any grayscale or color graphics, your best bet is to scan in black-and-white mode (as opposed to color or grayscale) for smallest file size. I'd suggest scanning at 300 DPI for sharp-looking printouts. Be sure to play around with the "threshold" value (or equivalent) in your scanning software until you figure out what looks best. If it's not set to a good level, text may look too thick and blocky, or thin lines might disappear completely.
Once you have a monochrome scan, you'll want to save in a lossless compression format that preserves the monochrome attribute of the image, such as compressed TIF, and not as JPEG. When exporting to PDF, you could experiment with both ZIP and fax (CCITT group 3/4) compression types -- both compress black-and-white images very well. If your PDF software doesn't have those options, the default should probably be good enough. Even at 300 DPI, most pages should fit into about 30K or so.
For a theater group with which I work, I built an inexpensive intercom system that uses standard corded or cordless telephones. The [simple] schematics I used can be found at http://www.epanorama.net/documents/telecom/telepho ne_intercom.html -- just scroll down to the "Theatre intercom circuit".
Basically, it mimics a standard phone line, and any telephone device you plug in can communicate with the others. You can run long cables and use splitters [nearly] to your heart's content. For about $30-$50 per station (hundreds less than a real, however superior, Clear-Com system), you can purchase corded or cordless headset telephones which work nearly as well.
If you do that, be sure to get phones with mute capability; and if you go cordless, be sure to check on battery life and try to get phones that don't beep too loudly. You might even need to disassemble the cordless phone and disable the internal beeper to make it silent.
Two things that are really nice about true Clear-Com systems is that (1) they can be operated silently (i.e., without beeping), and (2) their mute/talk controls can be operated by feel alone -- you don't need to look at a mute LED to determine whether or not you're muted. Those features are hard to come by on unmodified corded and cordless phones.
In general, a theater intercom system needs to be absolutely reliable, and should also be full-duplex (which walkie-talkies are not, but telephones are). I'd shy away from creating a custom wireless soultion with unproven technology -- it will take much more time to develop and won't be as reliable. If anything goes wrong during a show, or if reception isn't good enough, you've got big trouble.
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Research into this stuff isn't just for cooks and crazies -- even Princeton has a small lab the goal of which is to experimentally gather a "better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality". It's called the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, and its web page can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ -- Martin
If the lecture notes you're scanning don't contain any grayscale or color graphics, your best bet is to scan in black-and-white mode (as opposed to color or grayscale) for smallest file size. I'd suggest scanning at 300 DPI for sharp-looking printouts. Be sure to play around with the "threshold" value (or equivalent) in your scanning software until you figure out what looks best. If it's not set to a good level, text may look too thick and blocky, or thin lines might disappear completely.
Once you have a monochrome scan, you'll want to save in a lossless compression format that preserves the monochrome attribute of the image, such as compressed TIF, and not as JPEG. When exporting to PDF, you could experiment with both ZIP and fax (CCITT group 3/4) compression types -- both compress black-and-white images very well. If your PDF software doesn't have those options, the default should probably be good enough. Even at 300 DPI, most pages should fit into about 30K or so.
Basically, it mimics a standard phone line, and any telephone device you plug in can communicate with the others. You can run long cables and use splitters [nearly] to your heart's content. For about $30-$50 per station (hundreds less than a real, however superior, Clear-Com system), you can purchase corded or cordless headset telephones which work nearly as well.
If you do that, be sure to get phones with mute capability; and if you go cordless, be sure to check on battery life and try to get phones that don't beep too loudly. You might even need to disassemble the cordless phone and disable the internal beeper to make it silent.
Two things that are really nice about true Clear-Com systems is that (1) they can be operated silently (i.e., without beeping), and (2) their mute/talk controls can be operated by feel alone -- you don't need to look at a mute LED to determine whether or not you're muted. Those features are hard to come by on unmodified corded and cordless phones.
In general, a theater intercom system needs to be absolutely reliable, and should also be full-duplex (which walkie-talkies are not, but telephones are). I'd shy away from creating a custom wireless soultion with unproven technology -- it will take much more time to develop and won't be as reliable. If anything goes wrong during a show, or if reception isn't good enough, you've got big trouble.