Challenge Connecting Multiple Smartphone Mic's Simply & Quickly

[Dutch Nomad]

Dear Readers,

I'm facing a pretty interesting challenge, which is: "How to connect multiple smartphone mic's in the quickest and simplest way?"

Here is a use case. I go into a meeting with a group of random (strangers) that all have smartphones, Android, iOS, Windows. Now I want to record this meeting and in doing so I would like to leverage the mic's of all the phones in the room. How can I get the strangers phones to connect with my system, or maybe the cloud, to capture all the recordings in one platform. The main difficulty being that the other people in the meeting do not want to spend time installing an app of any kind. Basically I want them to notice the least possible of the whole operation. They should have to do little to nothing.

My ideas:
- Using the android beam technology by holding phones against each other (only works on Nexus though)
- Using some sort of bluetooth system.
- Maybe I have a unique URL that I can type into a webserver on each phone.

If you have any thoughts, ideas, suggestions on this challenge, feel free to comment!Peter

 

[skeptic2]

Can you set up a conference call with all the included phones? They probably would all have to have their volumes turned down so they don't cause feedback with each other.

 

[davenn]

yeah using Skype in conference mode

not sure if/ how it could be recorded tho

 

[Dutch Nomad]

Can you set up a conference call with all the included phones? They probably would all have to have their volumes turned down so they don't cause feedback with each other.

Hey,

Thanks for the answer. It's not the ideal solution because the people would need to hold their phones on their ear all the time and like Davenn mentions, I'm not recording this.

Here is another thought: One person initiates the conversation and has a number that the other guys can send a text message to. Now there needs to be a way to connect these people with the first person by using the received text messages to connect everyone and turn on their mic's!

 

[Dutch Nomad]

yeah using Skype in conference mode

not sure if/ how it could be recorded tho

Thanks for replying!
It would indeed be something similar to Skype but then with recording. I'm still thinking how it could be easier than having to use Skype though. Maybe using NFC (near field communication) or something alike. It should basically be the simplest way to connect phones ever. Bluetooth is not bad, but it's not the most reliable either :s

 

[sophiecentaur]

I Googled WiFi video conferencing and found a lot of hits. You could operate without the vision and the data rate would be significantly lower.
Earphones would remove the problem of howlround.