Topic: help -- pc as recorder for research project

[flintstone]

I need to configure a PC to record audio for a research project.
I'd appreciate any hardware and software recommendations.

Our goal is to record ambient sound for about 5 minutes,
save the resulting WAV audio file, wait for an hour, record for
5 minutes, and so on for several days. 

Yes, I know about the "frog logger" recording hardware.
I'd prefer to do it myself using a laptop.

I was thinking of using a spaced pair of omni mics, with
external phantom power supply box, cabled to a laptop with
VXPocket v2 Cardbus interface.  Sound reasonable?

A company called EZsoftmagic has a software product
called Audio Recorder Pro that claims to digitize mic input
into 16/48 WAV files.  Audio Recorder Pro also has a
scheduler software that will start and stop the recording
at the desired intervals. This sounds like what we need.
Any other software suggestions?

I was planning to use a laptop with Pentium-M processor
and Windows XP.  Any suggestions for Windows power
management settings to make the battery last as long
as possible?

I expect to need a big external battery, probably a
sealed lead-acid unit.  Any suggestions?

Last, I need to package all this into a weatherproof,
theftproof box that can be set up outside.  Any
ideas?

Thanks for the help.

Flintstone

[284201]

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