On-Demand Video + CMS + Interactive Input For Museum? 131
Posted
by
timothy
from the free-reign-in-spain dept.
from the free-reign-in-spain dept.
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?"
LinuxMCE (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been looking at LinuxMCE [linuxmce.org] for my own home system. It looks like a really good fit for what you want: Media, touchscreen controls, multiple outputs. Plus, it's a thin-client system, so once you decide on a terminal setup, you can repeat ad nauseum.
I would also point out that this may be a good setup for the expansion you're alluding to. For example, you could set up different accounts for either different works or different artists. Log all the terminals in one room to the account under that artist, and you could have the media for all the different pieces queued up on the menu.
Hmmm..if you ever had a Salvador Dali [wikipedia.org] exhibit, you could have some Dark Side of the Moon playing on the sound system...
Re:Holy Infrastructure Batman (Score:1, Interesting)
It's been tried.
Visitors spent all there time staring at there phones, and ignored the museum artifacts.
Re:maybe hire someone qualified (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. I've been doing this kind of museum work for over 20 years and currently can't get hired because I'm too experienced (read they don't want to pay a living wage.) And I've seen way too many IT people with no exhibit background fuck things up completely with excessive levels of complexity. Bottom line, if you don't know what you're doing, get out of the way and let someone qualified do it.
Yes, I'm bitter. With damned good reason.
Re:And we're supposed to do your job? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it have to be this complicated? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not just have consumer DVD players adapted for touchscreens, and stick them in kiosks? My day job involves working on a kiosk put out by a division of the Boston Museum of Science, and it's completely self-contained; so is most everything on the floor.
Burn a new DVD for the new exhibit, dump it in the kiosks near it, you're done, no finicky wiring to set up. KISS.
Re:maybe hire someone qualified (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, I like guys like him. I got my first job out of University because the other guy wouldn't budge on the wage.
Re:Holy Infrastructure Batman (Score:3, Interesting)
this raises an interesting consideration. you'd want to be sure that your implementation will draw people to the art, not your exhibit display. i know that stage is still down the road, once you've decided on a framework for delivering content, but keeping things low-key can carve a nice little niche whereas if your work draws too much attention curators could easily say, "this competes with the art, we want it out" and you'd possibly end up "out" with it.
Re:Does it have to be this complicated? (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. I saw the original post and all I could think was "What are you actually expecting to get by running these through ethernet and setting up a central web server?"
Look, people are mostly being nice here, but if this guy is starting with the technology and doesn't think the goals are important enough to the project to share with this question, he's already doomed to failure.
It's outright unprofessional to turn a project like this into your personal toy. Build something that is sturdy and that museum employees (volunteers?) can easily fix when things go wrong.
Re:I've done a similar project (Score:1, Interesting)
Regardless of the previous poster's intent, I've seen museums with speakers in plastic domes (above your head) that do an excellent job of localizing sound to one exhibit. The Fort Pitt museum in Pittsburgh has them. Solves most of the noise / annoyance problems you mentioned.
Re:One word: Maintenance (Score:2, Interesting)
And I would give it -1, thus nature balances itself.
Some advice (Score:2, Interesting)
From my experience there are a couple of things you need to do:
Go central. If it needs to be managed later on, you don't want ton run around swapping DVD's just to find out someone made a typo and do it all over again ( not talking about the enviromental choice of needing to burn disks on every content change)
Plan for the future.. DVD is good these days but it won't be long before everyone is demanding their neanderthaler videos in Full HD 1080p thank you very much (-> 6 Mbps at least).. running some cat 5e with 1 Gb Full Duplex will NOT get the content to those 20 Clients. Streaming might be an answer but you should test this (and with a real setup, not just hooking up 1 client and opening an HD file)
Find a good kiosk builder. As someone else said here before: these things get abused A LOT. We also do kiosks on streets which is a nightmere but even kids in a museaum with guards in it can do major damage to the machinery in the blink of an eye.
Use the right software and protocols. Don't go opensource because it's opensource. Don't remove features from your list because only commercial products offer it. Use a protocol that is designed to handle these kind of loads of content (HTTP was never designed for serving up files of 100's of MB's.. it can do it, but there are more efficient methods. Find out which one suites your project best. (could even be streaming it with VLC)
You could even consider building a software yourself if your needs are too specific
And if you can, hire a professional to check the dots before implementing. I've been in IT for a long time but nothing i have ever encountered preparred me for my current situation with audio / video solutions. it's not like apt-getting MythTV and off you go..
Re:maybe hire someone qualified (Score:2, Interesting)
So at some point you mustn't have known how to do all this stuff right? Or were you born with the knowledge?
I think the GP is on to a good thing and sounds like the kind of direction I would go if I were lucky enough to be working on the project.
A web server serving up pages and vids with kiosk mode firefox on Linux sounds like the way to go. I have worked on similar and seen various options for resetting things (the Kiosks) if they get messed up or abused, from simple restart scripts to hardware watchdog timers to automatic re-imaging. But don't get too hung up on the details - you would be amazed at what often lurks behind the public face of these sorts of things - some of the interactive TV systems I have worked on are a real eye opener. Cable runs aren't an issue at that length - if it gets over 100meters just chain a few strategically placed switches together.
There are plenty of Kiosk hardware manufacturers around the world and they should be able to provide some insight from installations they have worked on.
Might be worth talking to other museums to find out what they did and how.
I think I might know a Bitter Anonymous Multimedia Installation person who might be interested in a consulting role - there is a small introduction fee...
Form follows function (Score:2, Interesting)
Believe it or not, the function is the most interesting part of design something new.
I've designed both AV systems and content management systems but to this point have found no pliable way to fit the "dream system" into my work.. None of the above recommendations are going to be a solution on their own, you need to design a 'system' made up of complimentary components to create something that is greater than the sum of it's parts. Be it turn-key or bespoke. the 'use flash/silverlight' question and others like it are completely irrelevant until you know how it's going to work overall in a practical sense. Form follows function.
Some quick conceptual ideas..
- A system that handles multiple media formats and can transcode, most likely via a seperate encoding server. Sorenson Squeeze as a concept is a good start, using preconfigured profiles and drop points etc.
- A system that is open to input by a variety of people, both internal and external parties (e.g. staff, external academics, students, and so on). This sort of functionality would provide an open 'wiki' digital content atmosphere to building application specific knowledge resources. This also, if done successfully would provide unlimited interest from third parties.
- A system that is available via a variety of platforms that are commonly accessible and woud act as a natural pathways form existing media reserves. E.g. public web page for uploading content to a specific museum attractions, library ISBN recommendations and so on.
- A system that allows web based media editing, primarily for formatting 'quick-dump' content to make it either suitable for delivery or contextually palatable. See Kaltura for inspiration.
- A system that delivers content to a physical identifiable location in the museum. It should be as simple as 'tricerotops' content arriving in a 'tricerotops' folder and being picked up from there by a mini pc or slim client.
- A system that allows for scheduling and composing of digital presentations. NEC panel director shows a good example of practical back end functionality.
- A system that allows dynamic touch based content call up by museum participants at the exhibit itself. A simple split screen web page with sub-topic content menus and a running presentation would work.
- Or even better, wireless touch tablets with RF/bluetooth proximity link to each exhibit, dynamically loading content as the person moves around the museum. Choose a rugged model, make people sign for it and throw an RF tag with beepers at the exit, done.
- Humanize the entire process.
I can not stress enough the importance of designing the function and feature set before you choose a technology path and allow yourself to be swayed by personal or community bias (it's easy to stick with what we know and swap to function follows form). It's about the user first, the content second, everything else comes third.
Either way, enjoy. :)