Hi there,
I've been searching high and low for some gadget / device that can do this (and I'm guessing I may need to find some old-school tech and just power it with ..... not sure but something)
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Basically I help at kids sports doing walk-up songs for the kids when they go in to bat.
Each walk-up song is a little MP3 that's the best 10 or 12 seconds that the kids like (I prepared the snippets in PremPro and just fade them out and exported as MP3). Each MP3 is labelled with the kids name in all-caps to make it easy to see on the mobile audio-playing app.
The kids don't always walk-up in the same order each weekend...
So what I've been doing is: I load the clips to my mobile, then I bluetooth to a little portable speaker. Then as a kid walks up, I hit play and let the clip play to completion (sometimes I have to quickly do a manual fade by putting the volume down on the mobile if the kid runs up too fast to the plate, or if the umpire calls play-ball quicker than expected).
Anyway, this works fine except for these problems:
On really really busy days with plenty parents because the Bluetooth signal goes haywire whenever there's too many people nearby (obviously with their mobiles on and bluetooth enabled)
It prevents me from handing the setup to someone (I don't trust anyone with my mobile) if I have to do canteen or scoring.
If someone sends me an SMS or WhatsApp or any other notification on my phone, it interferes and even broadcasts the sound through the speakers (hahah)
What I was hoping for was to find some kind of device where I could code-in the MP3 clips to a button (like a sound-board) and then with a wired connection connect it to a speaker. And then it's just a matter of pressing the right button when the kid walks up and it'll just play (and only play) that single track. There are usually 9 or 10 kids in the line-up, and we usually have an additional 5 or 6 other little tracks that we use for pump music when they're fielding (like a walk-out track or walk-back track when they return to the dugout). So if this 'thing' can accommodate say 15 or even 20 tracks that would be good.
.....But without the need for any kind of laptop - because then I have the same issue of needing to lend it to another person at times and I don't know how careful they'll be with my laptop.
Is there any kind of device or setup that anyone can recommend that would do this kind of thing?
Been searching eBay for ages for ideas and I can never quite find what I'm after (either it needs a laptop as well, or it doesn't have enough tracks that can be coded to each button, or.....)
Anyway, just thought I'd finally ask someone to see if I get lucky with someone who's had to do something similar in the past
Thanks!