More Miscellaneous Ideas

Here are some more ideas which I don't intend to do anything about myself but which might be fun.

Any comments on these - e.g. to tell me that it's already been done - do email me
Andy Robinson, Seventh String Software, andy@seventhstring.com

Low latency video calls (and indeed audio calls)

I don't know the details of how video calling apps work but I presume they route all the data through a server somewhere, which would explain the poor latency. This can be ok for conversation but it is quite impossible for musicians to play music together through such a link.

However when I "ping" an ip address about 12 miles away from where I am, I get a round trip time of about 20ms. This is roughly equivalent to two people sitting 3 metres apart, which would be entirely practical for two people to play music together.

So how about a video (or audio) calling app which works by establishing direct connections between the participants, instead of routing through a server?

Virtual Record Player

This one is not original but I don't know if it's been tackled seriously in recent times. I'm simply talking about using high resolution photography to construct an accurate 3D model of the surface of a vinyl record, and then using software to convert that to sound. This would be a project for someone who is already familiar with these kinds of photographic and modelling techniques.

Here is someone who has already done it - but only in a crude "proof of concept" sort of way, as you will appreciate if you listen to the sound samples on that page.

Advantages:

Guaranteed not to harm the record.
Blemishes on the surface can be identified and fixed in the image before converting to sound. This should be superior to purely audio based scratch removal algorithms.
It would work with damaged disks that cannot be played at all on a conventional player, e.g. if it has a hole in it (in addition to the one in the middle!).
Disks that are broken into pieces could be virtually reassembled.

Difficulties:

Even if a disk is cleaned carefully it is still likely to have tiny dust particles in the grooves. The needle of a conventional record player sweeps these out of the way. A photographic technique would need to identify them in the image to remove them.

Big Hearing Aids

Surely this must have been done already... traditionally hearing aid designers have tried to make hearing aids as unobtrusive as possible. But meanwhile it has become commonplace to see the under-30s wearing big headphones in public places. Clearly it would be a simple matter to wear hearing aids and look cool at the same time, by fitting a little microphone in each of those big earpieces. Obvious.

Side camera on phone

This one is a bit naughty as it would make it much easier to take surreptitious pictures. Our mobile phones have front-facing and rear-facing cameras, but what about a camera looking out through the side or top edge of the phone?

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