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Ringing Mobile Phone Onstage


gkevents

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Something to get people thinking (sorry guys)

 

I need a mobile phone to ring onstage, I have looked at all of the other forum posts but theres nothing really that solves my problem. The performance has no set whatsoever to hide speakers and is set with the audience on three sides so the sound needs to come from the actor himself. I initially planned to simply call the actor's phone on cue but the interfeirance through the rest of the system was unbearable.

 

the actor wears unbeleivably tight jeans on stage (they actually look painful :wacko: ) so constructing a wireless device would be possible however it would have to be phone size (iphone size would be fine).

 

Does anyone know if there is an app out there that will play an mp3 (or other format) file on a phone, iphone or android or other, when triggered from another phone or computer over bluetooth or wifi? even some sort of joke software like the superbluetooth app for sony erricson that got quite a few of my mate's phones confiscated whilst in school! ** laughs out loud **.

 

Thanks Guys

 

 

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an Android phone with Tasker installed could probably be made to do something along these lines. I'll have a play now and see what I can come up with.

 

<div><br></div><div>EDIT: I've had a think / fiddle, and I can't really come up with a reliable method to trigger a sound file on cue. A timer is possible, as is playing a tone on a bluetooth connect / disconnect, but there are delay issues with that. Tasker will play a tone when pretty much any event happens on the phone, its just finding an event that will work.</div>

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Theres apps that do "fake calls" for example you set it to ring in 5 minutes time or however long you wish... Your never going to get an accurate cue with it though unless it doesn't really matter to the second when the call comes through... Have you tried ringing the phone from a landline? As the interference could be from the phone making the call not the phone that is recieving it.
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I did a show the other week that needed a mobile phone to ring on cue twice. The actress simply prepared before the scenes by going into the "change your ringtone" page, placing the cursor on the ringtone we wanted and putting her finger over the "preview" button. When the phone was required to ring she pressed the button. It worked fine for us. May not work for everyone, I suppose, and there's always a worry that someone will actually call her while she's on stage in which ase you'd have to get hold of a cheap phone that no-one knew the number to!
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Thanks for all the replies guys I like the idea of getting the actor to press play as it were. I'll record the ringtone with about 10 seconds of silence beforehand and get him to rehearse it so that its not obvious that he's made it go off.

 

I have gone and bought a new sim card (99p) and have kept the number top secret so that I'm the only one that can ring him. at least if that way fails I can be on hand to call it from my phone and put up with the inerferance.

 

Thanks guys

 

 

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I have gone and bought a new sim card (99p) and have kept the number top secret so that I'm the only one that can ring him. at least if that way fails I can be on hand to call it from my phone and put up with the inerferance.

 

 

On New Years Eve, a would-be suicide bomber in Moscow was killed when the phone company sent her a text message after she set up the connection from phone to bomb. The consequences of a similar call/message on stage wouldn't be quite as permanent--but there's no guarantee that a call can't come in even if you keep the number secret! More seriously, my daughter recently got a new phone and number--and she's had several calls for a person who had the number at some point in the past.

 

Bob

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One other thought - how about controlling the phone over Wifi?

 

Hmm yeah I have had a look at that but had no joy really, other than painstakingly programming my own app and the production really doesnt mean that much, thanks though.

 

Thanks for the advice about the service messages and stuff, I have set the message tone to silent so there shouldnt be a problem with the texts. I havnt had a problem with someone calling as of yet but I will give O2 a ring to make sure that it will only accept calls from my number. Having said that I'd have to be pretty unlucky... cheers though.

 

George

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One other thought - how about controlling the phone over Wifi?

Hmm yeah I have had a look at that but had no joy really, other than painstakingly programming my own app and the production really doesnt mean that much, thanks though.

No tried it, but would this work?

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Going down the route of having the phone set up with a media file cue'd up ready to play a ringtone, rather than a live phone call, To remove the risk of interference or another incoming call most phones now have a 'flight mode' that will switch off everything except the media player and games. Other than that many phones will work without a SIM card.
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Have a look at using PlugPlayer, which is a upnp media player for iPhone. The upnp framework means you can stream media over a network, but more importantly in this scenario, also remote control 'media renderers'.

 

You should using a 2nd instance of PlugPlayer be able to remote control the first instance on demand. Turn 3g connectivity off on the first iphone to prevent calls, or better still use an ipod touch.

 

Similar apps may be available for android, but I don't know.

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One other thought - how about controlling the phone over Wifi?

Hmm yeah I have had a look at that but had no joy really, other than painstakingly programming my own app and the production really doesnt mean that much, thanks though.

No tried it, but would this work?

 

The link looks a bit sketchy on the detail but something like VNC is exactly what I would use if I didn't feel like writing my own program (remote control of Windows CE devices is part of my job).

 

James.

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