MultiHub Forum

I’ve been tasked with creating a small, immersive audio installation for a historical society’s exhibit on local 19th-century maritime trade, but my budget is only about $300. I have three old, mono reel-to-reel tape decks I salvaged, and I want to layer field recordings of ship creaks, harbor bells, and period-appropriate sea shanties to play from discrete speakers hidden in a reconstructed ship’s hull section. My main hurdle is I need the three decks to sync and loop different tapes simultaneously in a damp, non-climate-controlled dockside building, and I’m worried about humidity warping the tapes and the mechanics failing without constant supervision over the six-month exhibit run. I’m struggling to find a simple, low-cost relay or sensor system to detect if one deck stops and pause the others automatically.

Plan a cheap sync box: designate one deck as master; wire each deck’s start input through opto-isolated relays controlled by an ESP32/Arduino. Add three AC current sensors on the mains to confirm activity. Start all from a single trigger; if any deck stalls, pause all until it resumes. Include a manual override and moisture-proof enclosures; under $300.