I am working in a location which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
They want a visitor to be able to walk into a room and press a button to select and play one or all of 4 recordings pertaining to the historic person who lived there.
It is desireable to be able to select which of the 4 recordings one would want to listen to maybe from a numbered legend or plaque located near the button(s).
4 separate buttons? Or better one button to toggle through each of the 4 selections. Some sort of indication of which selection you were listening to would be necessary however such as maybe a remote LED readout numbered 1,2,3,4 indicating which audio clip one was listening to.
The audio clips would be stored digitally or burned to CD on the device.
Can someone point me to such equipment that sounds like it would work in this application?
I've got brain lock on this one.
Thanks.
PS. The interface needs to be accessible and simple for the elderly or non tech savvy. Hence a simple button press to play a clip till it ends. Then stop till the next button press. An iPod interface would be too much I suspect.

This type of system is right up Alcorn McBride's alley. I suggest contacting them for the proper solution. 1-407-296-5800

Gilderfluke in Burbank CA has stuff that will do what you need.

I suggest four buttons, and if you can find a couple dozen antique-looking buttons (so you'll have backup if they break), so much the better. An LED display would be totally wrong for showing off antique electronics!

I've got a Gilderfluke item with music stored on it, and when a person walks into the house's entry, music fades in, then plays until 15 seconds after they exit the room. This is on one piece, 2" square, solid state recording so no moving parts, 20 watt amplifier... surely they have something that can help you!

I googled antique radio knobs. I copied URLs from only a few of the images. Someone out there has oodles of these for sale.







These have labels on them, but that only adds to their authenticity:

i cannot imagine why I copied the ENTIRE friggin' email above to make this comment! So I edited it out. Here's the comment:


This stuff is right up my line since I started in electronics by buying 20+ year old equipment when I was a kid around 1960. I haven't been interested in dealing with it, since my interest is retrieving the highest possible fidelity audio from records made back then, and a lot of recordings are surprisingly high quality.

There are alot of options out there but this would work for you.....

[Link: tascam.com]

You can trigger 20 tracks from a button press on the 25 Pin DB25 on the rear. Time from button press to play is imediate we use them in theaters all the time for chimes. We do use the SD not the disc

I would suggest you choose switches that will withstand a lot of abuse. The buttons will get mashed by kids, leaned on, sat upon, and who knows what else!

Arcade buttons are designed for exactly this kind of abuse. They do not look "antique" in their standard state, but I think I'd rather have buttons that didn't try to masquerade as antiques, and were ultra-reliable.

I've bought from the following place. They have a great selection. Most of the buttons actually are simply a plastic injection molded piece, and a microswitch attaches. Many even give an option to light them.

[Link: groovygamegear.com]

If the player can give some feedback, a nice interface would involve the button actuating the playback, and the button being lit by a voltage output from the player. The buttons referenced above consist of momentary switches. LED lighting if desired is an independent circuit, that would need to be controlled through something else, such as the player.

I haven't seen a nice set of knobs like that, well, since before I was married.
Nice find.