[PLUG] Artsy Audio

Noj nojunkster at gmail.com
Sun Jul 5 01:40:15 UTC 2009


A friend wants me build a simple sounding gadget, but I'm not sure how
to proceed. Basically an outdoor mike, speaker, and pressure switch
under a mat in/in front of art display, probably with cords going back
to a linux box indoors. When you step on the mat, it plays the last 21
seconds of messages, and then does an audio prompt to leave a 7 second
message.

The microphone and speaker are pretty straightforward, and in a pinch
I was going to build my own normal-open pressure switch (unless
someone knows where I can buy one, maybe electronic keyboard pedal?)
and wire it to short out the spacebar on a cheap pc keyboard via cat5
cable. Not sure how long a run of cat5 can carry keyboard switch level
voltage without becoming ineffective, but I can experiment with that.

Anyone know a good scriptable wav recording/playback app I can put on
the box (maybe command line oriented)? In psuedo-coding this, I
presumed the ability to detect 'keydown' and 'keyup', or an
application that can alternate 'play while key held down' with 'record
while key held down with max clip length' behavior. Ability to detect
silence would allow it to behave a bit more intelligently (or maybe
just a post-recording pass to clip out long gaps in sound above a
certain threshold).

Any ideas for completely different ways to approach this are welcome,
I haven't bought anything yet.

Maybe even could do something based on several programmable greeting
cards instead, just have to have something that the business end can
be left out unattended (IE, less than $30 invested in exposed parts if
someone gets thiefy or vandaly).

Thanks in advance, hope the idea catches your fancy like it did mine
(Idea is to create some entertaining asyncronous communications
between neighbors that rarely talk to each other, just by putting
something at a point they frequently walk past).

-Noj



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