Voice recorder for Nokia, for very poor (or stingy) people…

As I’m doing interviews for my dissertation, and each one of them must be recorded and transcribed, i started to wonder what i could use to record it….

bring with me the laptop? a bit too big as a recording device…
buy a voice recorder? but i have to spend money for something i will never use again…

use the mobile? ok i can do that… but i have to buy a decent recorder because i haven’t find one free on internet… and i really hate the idea of spending even only 10bucks. But frankly, it’s not about the money, it’s about the idea: Why i should spend money for doing something that is so damn simple? Input from the microphone -> Output in a file.

So i made my own voice recorder: I used Python for Symbian and i used this script to record:

import audio
import appuifw

nome=appuifw.query(u'Name:','text' )
nome=nome.strip()
s = audio.Sound.open('E:\\'+nome+'.amr' )
s.record()  # start recording

domanda=appuifw.query(u'Recording... stop n play?','query' )

s.stop() # stop recording

# the file is now created, ready to be played

if domanda:
   s.play()
   appuifw.query(u'Press to exit...','query' )
   s.stop()

As you can see, this is not exactly a cutting-edge software that turn your mobile in a recording station. But it does its job, and i would say, it’s doing it pretty well so far. I already recorded 6-7 hours and the “amr” quality is sufficient, in my opinion, for transcribing purposes.

What you need is: A symbian phone, Python for nokia, bluetooth for sending the file to the pc and it’s done!

P.S. You’d better put the phone in offline state when recording, otherwise when you receive a call the phone will stop recording.

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