[PLUG] Artsy Audio

Noj nojunkster at gmail.com
Mon Jul 6 02:07:23 UTC 2009


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

Randal> Sounds like a perfect thing for an Arduino box.  Listen to
Randal> http://twit.tv/floss61 for our interview with the developers.

Thanks for reminding me of that show, I heard it but should review it.
Was left with the impression that it was good at hooking to sensors
and turning things on and off, but could it record and playback audio
on it's own? Anyway, a bit overkill if I only need one switch
detected, but I would like to get an Arduino, seems to greatly expand
the amount of low-budget projects I could try.

In any case, the timeframe for doing this just changed from 'about a
month' to 'next week', so I'm going to just get a bunch of greeting
card modules for about $3 each (bigdawgspromo.com), arrange them in a
circle, put a wheel with openings in it as an overlay so that only one
record button is exposed at a time, while all play buttons EXCEPT that
one are exposed. The directions on the wheel would be something like
'play as many of the preceeding messages as you like, then record your
response and advance the wheel one mark clockwise'.

Since this solution doesn't keep any record of the messages except the
last message left in each physical module, I'm thinking an extra mike
and switch running via cat5 to the house that records mp3 on the linux
box only while a certain key is held down, 'push to talk' style.

So PLUG question: what's a good linux app that can be made to record
only while a key is being held down?

- Noj



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