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An Automated Announcement System

AAAS Robot

An Automated Announcement System (or “AAAS”) is an idea for a system that can make scheduled announcements during an event when you are too busy to do it yourself.

This is an idea I was working on back around 2017 or so when I was one of the producers for Maker Faire Milwaukee. Each year the venue would have a PA system, and our venue manager would show us how to use it. It was typically a mic with an on/off switch attached to the front panel of a PA system ready to go. Pick up mic, turn it on, talk, turn it off. Simple, right?

The issue is that we always ran with a skeleton crew of just a few people, and we were always dealing with putting out fires or dealing with something important and would always forget to make announcements!

The other issue is that when you go live on a mic with 5,000 people listening you might not deliver your words smoothly… especially if you don’t have a script to read from… and who has time to write a script when things are one fire all around you?

So that’s where the idea of An Automated Announcement System came from.

The original idea was that I would create a schedule of announcements and then prerecord them all to audio files, then once we had a folder full of audio files we’d load them onto a Raspberry Pi with cron jobs to run a script to play the audio at the appropriate times.

The Raspberry Pi would have the audio output connected to the audio input of the PA system so it could just run in the background without any user intervention, and do the announcements for you.

Maybe the audio files would all have timestamps as names and one script would just run continually checking for a match of the current time and then play the file. That might be easier than scheduling a whole bunch of cron jobs. Heck there’s probably some super-simple unixy-system way to do it that. (If not maybe I should write one!?)

Anyway, that was my idea for An Automated Announcement System which never happened because I never had time to work on it and then in 2020 there was a global pandemic and Maker Faire was put on hold. Sigh.

Feel free to run with this idea if you like it!

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Knowledge – Ideas – Skills

KIS

I’ve been thinking about this triangle consisting of three elements: Knowledge, Ideas, and Skills, and how people have these three things.

Knowledge is the things that you learn. The bits of data that you collect over the years, either from reading, or experience, or just taking in the world around you.

Skills involve actually doing things. Building things, writing code, designing stuff. Going beyond theories and ideas to create.

Ideas are what you bring to the table. Your own thoughts and dreams, as it were. The spark that ignites the creation of something.

Ideally you’d want to be right in the center, and be equally strong with Knowledge, Ideas, and Skills. Though perhaps as you exist in the center your strength at each one diminishes. Perhaps there are the rare individuals who can excel at all three, but in thinking about people I know (and myself) it’s probably more likely that people hit one or two of them strongly, and a third not as much.

I used to know a guy who was a phenomenal guitar player. His technical skills were amazing, and his knowledge was up there, he knew tons of songs and could play them perfectly. Sadly, his ideas were lacking, and he wasn’t much of a songwriter. Luckily he was in a band (a team) where others could provide the ideas. This is what teams should do, right? Bring together members with different strengths to create something better than what just one person can do.

In my own work (and play) knowledge is something I’m always chasing after. I spend a lot of time reading, and occasionally I ask questions. I tend to make a lot of notes as well, which helps, because I just can’t remember everything. I figure if I can remember where I stored some bit of information, that’s good enough.

And then there’s skills… Acquiring skills takes time, and practice, and doing things over and over again, and applying the knowledge you’ve acquired to the thing you’re trying to do. Design work, using tools, manipulating materials, writing words, capturing images… they all fall under skills.

As for ideas, I have plenty of them, I’m sure some (ok, most) of them are bad, or ridiculous. Often I go with the ridiculous ideas to see where it takes me, and along the way I hone my skills and acquire more knowledge. Occasionally in doing so I create a thing, and I enjoy the process and the journey.

Maybe I should call this the KIS Principle (Knowledge, Ideas, Skills) for short.

Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to know what I’m talking about, and when I write this sort of thing it’s really just an exploration of my thoughts, typed out on the screen. Occasionally I feel like sharing these thoughts with the world.

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The Struggle

Pixel Net

I can only assume that people who are “normal,” who follow the crowd, don’t make waves, don’t stand strong behind a set of beliefs, and have never “called bullshit” on anything, have things just a little bit easier in life…

I can only assume this because I have no idea…

Then again, the above may be a complete load of crap.

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Makerspace Logo

Makerspace

I often talk about the “2XL Makerspace” I have in my basement, which has a workshop, many tools, a soldering station, a photo studio, a craft table, and various other junk, it’s mainly a joke… I mean, the kids and I do make things down there, but it’s not any sort of official makerspace that is open to the public.

I had the idea that it would be fun to come up with a logo though, and decided to use a Space Invader in it. I took the classic Space Invader alien and modified it to contain the letter M, and then distorted the perspective a bit.

If it were a sign, I’d put some BlinkMs in it to pulsate through the color spectrum.

If you’ve got a real makerspace, feel free to use this idea… and if you do, let me know!

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Developer Perspective

Swirly

I’ve come to realize that when I think about some tool I want to build, it’s typically driven by that “scratch your own itch” idea, where a developer does something because they want to solve their own problem. You’ll most often hear this idea attributed to open source software. Often my ideas come about when I think about who controls my data, or the software that I use. I tend to work towards maintaining my own freedom.

But there’s a whole other side… There are developers who develop something, and it’s not because a client hired them to, but because they think it’s a great idea, and sometimes they do follow the “scratch your own itch” idea, but they also think there’s a great money making opportunity worth exploring. Some developers within this realm are fine with creating something, and either selling it off, or letting it die if it “doesn’t work” or doesn’t become popular.

I’m not suggesting that one idea is better or worse than the other, it’s just an observation. I’m really interested to hear what others think…