Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?
--
Chris

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.

I read that as:- "a period of medication"... ;-)

--
Frank Erskine

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.

Dead easy!

Stick a coin or such in the side of a burning candle, candle standing on a tin
plate, so that it falls out after about half an hour...


Thomas Prufer

In article ],
Chris ] wrote:
Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Very easy to do electronically - there are a big selection of sound
generators on the market. Or even to use a sample of exactly what you want.

My choice would be a suitable piano chord.

--
*I took an IQ test and the results were negative.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Many mobile phones have diaries/event reminders and user settable
tones.

HI All

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Another way...... g

Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30 minutes
of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio editing
side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
.....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
HI All

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Another way...... g

Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30 minutes
of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio editing
side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track of 10
minutes ending with the chime.

In message , OG
writes
Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track of
10 minutes ending with the chime.

Then slip in another CD with 5 silent tracks and a violent rock track
and turn the volume up full.

Or program a PIC microcontroller with a button for each 10 minute
increment and a simple DAC to create a soft chordy gong noise in
software. Bit harder than a CD though.

The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

I wonder how much silence can be stored on a CD with standard audio
compression.

--
Clive Mitchell
http://www.bigclive.com

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:05:36 GMT, Clive Mitchell wrote:

I wonder how much silence can be stored on a CD with standard audio
compression.

Beware violating copyright, though....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3


Thomas Prufer

HI Owen

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:11:10 +0100, "OG"
wrote:


"Adrian" wrote in message
.. .
HI All

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping when
the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Another way...... g

Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30 minutes
of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio editing
side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track of 10
minutes ending with the chime.


Now you're getting complicated !
Adrian

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:05:36 GMT, Clive Mitchell
wrote:

In message , OG
writes
Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track of
10 minutes ending with the chime.

Then slip in another CD with 5 silent tracks and a violent rock track
and turn the volume up full.

Not kind ! g


Or program a PIC microcontroller with a button for each 10 minute
increment and a simple DAC to create a soft chordy gong noise in
software. Bit harder than a CD though.

The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

Ahem !
The idea for 'x mins silence + a sound' actually came from the
Spiritualist Church I used to work for in Ipswich.

Our Saturday services were a fairly standard, 'prayers, hymns and
mediumship' format - but on Sundays the format included a (slient)
'Healing minute' which finished with a chord on the organ, before a
particular hymn was sung.

In order to give the long-suffering organist the occasional weekend
off, we recorded her playing a number of hymns, and 'Goldwaved' these
onto CDRs. A little pic-based cirsuit from Elektor (Pandora's box)
allowed a standard PC CDROM drive to play the tracks for a service in
the right order, and by pressing only one 'big red button'.

So - that's where the idea of 'a minute's silence followed by a chord'
came from.....

.....and 'no' - the congregation were not all 'hippies' g

Regards
Adrian

I wonder how much silence can be stored on a CD with standard audio
compression.

In message , Clive Mitchell
writes
I wonder how much silence can be stored on a CD with standard audio
compression.

Philistine, audio compression is usually lossy so it'd affect the
dynamic range and subsonic clarity. For HiFi quality it needs to be
pressed on new vinyl that's only been handled by a 40 year old virgin in
an oxygen free environment, or summat like....
--
Clint Sharp

In uk.d-i-y, OG wrote:
"Adrian" wrote in message
.. .
Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30 minutes
of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio editing
side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track of 10
minutes ending with the chime.

Great! Then you'd have the option of putting the player on shuffle, to
get a random delay.

--
Mike Barnes

In article ,
Clive Mitchell wrote:
I wonder how much silence can be stored on a CD with standard audio
compression.

Makes no difference if it's a CD. Compact Disc Digital Audio� has a red
book which defines the standard - including maximum length. Once you use
data compression it is no longer a CD. ;-)

--
*Why is 'abbreviation' such a long word?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In uk.d-i-y, Clive Mitchell wrote:
The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

To do the job properly, you'd want to carefully arrange the track
lengths to give a wide range of time periods. For example, ten tracks
each of four minutes, two minutes, one minute, and thirty seconds. A
total of 40 tracks, time range 0:30 to 75:00. No doubt this scheme could
be improved on.

Then you'd need to provide a table to look up the starting track number
based on the time required. And hope your customers weren't too spaced
out to understand it.

--
Mike Barnes

OG wrote:
"Adrian" wrote in message
...
HI All

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping
when the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Another way...... g

Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30
minutes of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio
editing side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track
of 10 minutes ending with the chime.

You might have to pay a royalty for the silent tracks. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2133426.stm
--
LSR

In message , Adrian
writes
A little pic-based cirsuit from Elektor (Pandora's box) allowed a
standard PC CDROM drive to play the tracks for a service in the right
order, and by pressing only one 'big red button'.

I built that! It worked pretty well.

--
Clive Mitchell
http://www.bigclive.com

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:56:34 UTC, Huge
wrote:

You might have to pay a royalty for the silent tracks. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2133426.stm

Only if you claim the silence is part of John Cage's 4'33" as Mike
Batt did.

He changed his mind and said that it was co-composed by Mikle Batt and
an alias of his - Clint Cage!

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

HI Clive

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:58:06 GMT, Clive Mitchell
wrote:

In message , Adrian
writes
A little pic-based cirsuit from Elektor (Pandora's box) allowed a
standard PC CDROM drive to play the tracks for a service in the right
order, and by pressing only one 'big red button'.

I built that! It worked pretty well.

Yes - didn't it ?

I looked at re-engineering it to make it a bit more 'user-friendly'
(or 'idiot-proof' !) . In the application I had it would have been
good to have the CD index read every time a new CD was inserted,
rather than just at power-on, and it would have been reassuring to
have a big green 'I'm ready to play' light and a comforting yellow
'I'm playing' light - but in the end I never got the necessary round
tuit.

There were reports of unreliability on my unut which we eventually
traced to the CD-Rom drive iteslf - which was very 2nd-hand when we
installed it. Put in a new drive and (so far) reports are good !

Neat piece of kit.....
Also thought about making it really clever, along the lines of a
'jukebox' - where you could create a playlist,,, but that idea also
perished for want of round tuits...

Regards
Adrian

In message , Adrian
writes
I looked at re-engineering it to make it a bit more 'user-friendly' (or
'idiot-proof' !) . In the application I had it would have been good to
have the CD index read every time a new CD was inserted, rather than
just at power-on, and it would have been reassuring to have a big green
'I'm ready to play' light and a comforting yellow 'I'm playing' light -
but in the end I never got the necessary round tuit.

As a super reliable alternative consider one of the theme park automated
players from http://www.gilderfluke.com . They use memory cards so
there's nothing to wear out.

--
Clive Mitchell
http://www.bigclive.com

In message , Adrian
writes


Or program a PIC microcontroller with a button for each 10 minute
increment and a simple DAC to create a soft chordy gong noise in
software. Bit harder than a CD though.

The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

Ahem !
The idea for 'x mins silence + a sound' actually came from the
Spiritualist Church I used to work for in Ipswich.


Not the bethesda baptist church ?

--
geoff

HI Clive

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:32:18 GMT, Clive Mitchell
wrote:

In message , Adrian
writes
I looked at re-engineering it to make it a bit more 'user-friendly' (or
'idiot-proof' !) . In the application I had it would have been good to
have the CD index read every time a new CD was inserted, rather than
just at power-on, and it would have been reassuring to have a big green
'I'm ready to play' light and a comforting yellow 'I'm playing' light -
but in the end I never got the necessary round tuit.

As a super reliable alternative consider one of the theme park automated
players from http://www.gilderfluke.com . They use memory cards so
there's nothing to wear out.

There's reliable and there's 'user friendly' g

What we needed was some kind of a simple solution -
along the lines of 'select the CD with the hymns on that you'd like to
play and put it into the drive'. Everything in the right order, just
press the 'go' button to play each track in the right sequence..

Even then, people manage to cock it up ! g

Regards
Adrian

HI Geoff

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:04:11 GMT, raden wrote:

In message , Adrian
writes


Or program a PIC microcontroller with a button for each 10 minute
increment and a simple DAC to create a soft chordy gong noise in
software. Bit harder than a CD though.

The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

Ahem !
The idea for 'x mins silence + a sound' actually came from the
Spiritualist Church I used to work for in Ipswich.


Not the bethesda baptist church ?

No - not that one.....

....this one - www.cedars-spiritualists.co.uk

Regards
Adrian

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2007-04-27, LSR wrote:
OG wrote:
"Adrian" wrote in message
...
HI All

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:36 +0100, Chris ] wrote:

Would it be easy to make a half-hour timer that emitted a soft ping
when the half-hour was up?
I thought it might be useful to signal the end of a period of
meditation.
It's not important at all - and might be fun to do.
Any ideas?

Another way...... g

Find the sound that you like somewhere on the internet

Burn it to an audio CD (or tape of you prefer), preceded by 30
minutes of silence (freebie software around to let you do the audio
editing side of things)

Start the CD when you start your meditation.....
....sound is played 30 minutes later....

Hope this helps
Adrian

Nice idea.
Better still, have 5 silent tracks each 10 minutes long and 1 track
of 10 minutes ending with the chime.

You might have to pay a royalty for the silent tracks. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2133426.stm

Only if you claim the silence is part of John Cage's 4'33" as Mike
Batt did.

At a cheapo music shop I once saw a compilation CD of excerpts of "Modern
Music of the 20th Century" or summat, which included about 1'45" of
4'33". Unfortunately it didn't say whether the excerpt was from the
beginning, the middle or the end, which struck me as a bit disrespectful of
the original piece.

"Mike Barnes" wrote in message
...
In uk.d-i-y, Clive Mitchell wrote:
The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

To do the job properly, you'd want to carefully arrange the track
lengths to give a wide range of time periods. For example, ten tracks
each of four minutes, two minutes, one minute, and thirty seconds. A
total of 40 tracks, time range 0:30 to 75:00. No doubt this scheme could
be improved on.

Then you'd need to provide a table to look up the starting track number
based on the time required. And hope your customers weren't too spaced
out to understand it.

--
Mike Barnes

It's always a compromise.
the 5 silences and a 'silence+ding' was so that you didn't need to do too
many 'skip's before you were ready.

I once built a dark room circuit based on a IC555 chip that switched on the
enlarger bulb for combinations of 1 : 2 : 4 : 8 second intervals based on
DIP switches to give me any combination up to 2 minutes 7 seconds - of
course it was too much bother to use, so you go for 'one elephant' 'two
elephant' instead! There's rarely a need to be able to discriminate between
1'32" and 1'33"

In uk.d-i-y, OG wrote:

"Mike Barnes" wrote in message
d...
In uk.d-i-y, Clive Mitchell wrote:
The person who posted the "5 silent tracks and a chime" idea should
consider that this is exactly the sort of thing that would sell to
hippies on ebay.

To do the job properly, you'd want to carefully arrange the track
lengths to give a wide range of time periods. For example, ten tracks
each of four minutes, two minutes, one minute, and thirty seconds. A
total of 40 tracks, time range 0:30 to 75:00. No doubt this scheme could
be improved on.

Then you'd need to provide a table to look up the starting track number
based on the time required. And hope your customers weren't too spaced
out to understand it.

--
Mike Barnes

It's always a compromise.
the 5 silences and a 'silence+ding' was so that you didn't need to do too
many 'skip's before you were ready.

Ah, I see. I'm used to entering the track number on the remote control.

--
Mike Barnes

In uk.d-i-y, Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:56:34 UTC, Huge
wrote:

You might have to pay a royalty for the silent tracks. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2133426.stm

Only if you claim the silence is part of John Cage's 4'33" as Mike
Batt did.

He changed his mind and said that it was co-composed by Mikle Batt and
an alias of his - Clint Cage!

I thought they were all extracts from that LP "The Wit and Wisdom of
Ronald Reagan" (Stiff Records, 1980) - 40 minutes of silence.

--
Mike Barnes