On-Demand Video + CMS + Interactive Input For Museum? 131
remolacha writes "I've been given the task of tech chief for a biggish art museum (1,300 m^2, or about 13,000 sq ft) in Spain. The museum's designers want 20 'terminals' that will offer on-demand video and interactive content. The terminals' content will change with the exhibits; many will have touchscreens. More interesting forms of input are planned as well (floor sensors, big buttons). It's all on one floor, and the floors are raised, so I can run cabling and set up floor ethernet jacks. Max cable run is 60m / 190ft. The museum may expand to 4 times its projected size once open, by comandeering other floors in the building. To give an idea of where the designers heads are, they were talking about a massive DVD changer in a closet somewhere. I am thinking an intranet running a web server with a CMS and Flash media server, terminals running Firefox in kiosk mode. I'd love to do everything on Linux. Does anyone have experience with a setup like this, better ideas, or advice?"
maybe hire someone qualified (Score:4, Insightful)
maybe hire someone that can do the job?
Buy it (Score:2, Insightful)
Get a quote, and buy it. When it doesn't work, scream at the vendor. Leave the tinkertoys at home.
I've done a similar project (Score:5, Insightful)
I did a project like this about 10 years ago for a museum in London. We used pretty much exactly the same technology as you except we used Windows and it was IE in kiosk mode and not Firefox, and it was Macromedia Generator, not Flash Media Server.
Don't worry too much about what technical things the designers are saying, they don't understand the technology like you do and they can only present ideas from the few technical things they understand. As long as the end user sees what the designers want them to see, then they'll be happy. Use the best technology you know how to use.
I would disagree with the poster above regarding using sound technologies. You have to remember that museums can be pretty noisy places, especially during high profile exhibitions and on weekends (if you've been there during working hours on a workday, don't think that's as busy as it gets!). The background noise can prevent a user from properly hearing the audio, and having audio too loud can disturb and irritate other visitors.
Sure, add audio if you think it'll enhance the product but don't make the mistake of having an interface that needs audio to function. Get some of your testers to use the kiosk for the first time without the sound on. if they can't use it then you need to fix that.
Also remember museums are visited by tourists from other countries, you'll probably have to have translations from some of the major languages if your kiosk relies on language to be used (if you use spoken languages, you'll have to have subtitles as well because of sound difficulties)
You might be able to reduce costs if the museum agrees to a sponsorship deal. Manufacturers may be willing to provide the touch screens and/or other hardware if they get a "powered by" logo on the kiosk.
Re:And we're supposed to do your job? (Score:5, Insightful)
what an assanine response. seeking advice is a sign of humility and merely indicates hes not a pompass ass-hat. its people that assume they know the best way of doing something and damn all the naysayers that find themselves up to their neck in a project where they failed to recognize all the considerations. thats a foolish way to do work. Hes got a fair idea of waht he wants to do and is looking to make sure he doesnt make an epic blunder. his employers arent tech savvy so hes likely under budgeted and is also likely a staff of one. not a good way to cover your bases
Re:maybe hire someone qualified (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should consider adjusting what you consider to be a 'living wage' cause I'm pretty sure something is more than nothing.
You are bitter because you've been replaced by someone who better fits the needs of their employers. Your fault, not anyone else's.
As someone who is the highest paid employee at the company I'm working at, which is a struggling company, the FIRST thing I did when I found out about the financial situation is said 'a pay cut is FAR better than a layoff, talk to me before you do it!'. Since then, 4 people have been released and I'm still here.
As a general rule, people who act like you really aren't that qualified, just arrogant.
random suggestions (Score:4, Insightful)
Find out who is going to be creating the content that will be shown, talk to them about their needs as if you care, but really pay attention when they talk about what software they use to do the authoring. then research that and find out what formats it supports. Maybe it's all flash like you said, but if someone is expecting quicktime or silverlight, you'd better find that out now instead of six months from now after you've ordered 100 linux boxes.
The cd/dvd jukebox idea is terrible. Loading a DVD will take more time than anyone is willing to sit around and wait, furthermore what if five people at five different kiosks want to look at content located on 5 different DVDs? That level of DVD changer is way more expensive than management realizes. A big rack of sata disks under control of a NAS server is probably your best bet. Also, I would worry less about RAID and more about being able to quickly cold swap a failed NAS server.
A "would be nice" is a way for people to walk around and interact with the exhibits without having to repeatedly press the "English" or "Spanish" or "French" buttons on each and every touchscreen. I hate that. They should be able to just grab an rfid token out of a bucket and walk around...and the whole place seems to be in their native language. Hey, maybe have a mic and the kiosk listens for common words in each language and acts accordingly.
Museums swap exhibits in and out fairly often. Have some low-effort way for the curators to swap the kiosk content to match. Maybe the content is tied to an inventory number and the curators can just enter a (semi) admin password, then the inventory number and set the default content right there. the general idea is that the last thing you want is to have to spend the rest of your life assigning content to kiosks.
I'd look into something wireless for the floor sensors/big buttons, like hacking into a bluetooth mouse. Then the curators can move things around a bit, change batteries, even redo the pairing if they want to move buttons between exhibits.
If you're thinking 100 or more kiosks in the long run, I'd look into PXE booting or similar just to avoid any OS install/upgrade/patch labor being multiplied by 100.
Firewall! Last thing you want is some 2 y/o kid to type some random museum words like "nude" or "maplethorp" into a browser and get 20M pages of confusing things on google images while their prudish american parents have a little conservative republican freak out.
Best of luck with this. In spite of the tone of my comments I'm quite jealous. This sounds like one of the most fun projects anyone could ever get!
Hire a Multimedia Company (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't hire an IT company. This is not primarily an IT job.
You want someone who can design interfaces, design interesting exhibits and instructional interactivities, and who can work with technical people to make it happen.
Re:One word: Maintenance (Score:2, Insightful)