My school, believe it or not, actually has a jukebox in the cafeteria. However, more times than I care to count, there has been someone down there at the time who didn't like the song I picked, and then did something to make the song stop before it's over, like
1. Turning the volume all the way down (there's a knob in the back) of course you can just turn it back up-but usually the person who turned it down the first time, will just turn it down again!
2. unplugging the jukebox- it "forgets" what song it was playing when it loses power so you cant restart the same song again without putting money in it and re-selecting it.
This is really selfish of them to do, because when a song is playing on a jukebox, that means someone paid for it to play, and therefore obviously wanted to hear it-the song didn't select itself. Also, there's bound to be other people in the area, other than the person who paid for it, who also like the music that's playing- especially considering how big the lunchroom is at my school, and that everyone has different tastes of music!
A good solution to both of these problems would be
to prevent #1 from happening, the volume should be controlled not by a knob, but an easily-accessible 3-position switch, or row of 3 buttons, that says "LO, MED, and HI" but with no way to turn the volume "all the way down" so it'll always play the song at a reasonably-audible level
For #2, the jukebox should have non-volatile memory to "remember" what song it was playing before the power went out, so that when power is restored, it starts playing the same song again. As an added bonus, to "punish" the person who was trying to stop the current song by unplugging it, upon re-inserting the plug, it will start the whole song over again- thereby forcing him to "suffer" through the whole entire song again!
That won't stop anyone from actually unplugging it, so that if the building staff needs to unplug it for whatever reason- like to get everyone's attention or because it's broken or whatever, they can do that easily, but when power is restored, it starts playing the same song that it was playing when it lost power.
To prevent people from purposly making a song replay for free by attempting to stop it a split-second before it ends, it'll only re- start from the beginning if there's at least 30 seconds left- otherwise, it will simply play from where it left off, so that it'll still finish the song.-- Dickcheney6, Oct 04 2008 Instead of non-volatile memory, I'd just make the plug inaccessible, by putting it in some sort of locked box. Then custodial staff can still unplug it if necessary, and if the power goes out for a while, people aren't suddenly blasted with music when it comes back on.
Definitely agree with the ideas though, people who do this are essentially ruining the product you paid for.-- Bukkakinator, Oct 05 2008 In my library, the "anti theft sensor bars" by the door are powered by a normal plug, but with a metal thingy covering the plug that's screwed to the wall, into the outlet cover plate screw hole. They could just do that with the jukebox. That wont stop people from turning the volume down, but you cant always have everything!
Another way they could do this is to install a metal bar that is screwed into the wall, that goes around the jukebox, while still leaving all the selection buttons and the pages uncovered (like it could go near the top) so that it cant be pulled away. They wouldnt have to drill into the actual machine in that case. On one side of the bar there would be a hinge, and on the other side a pad lock holding the bar, and the jukebox, to the wall. then when the staff needs to get behind it, they could just remove the padlock with the key and swing the bar open like a door. To avoid any complaints by the staff to have to keep track of 2 keys for 1 machine, the padlock and the locks for the machine could all use the same key! (it'd probably have to be a special-order from a lock smith or something, and then you'd have to replace ALL the locks on the jukebox, so maybe the whole "same key" thing isnt such a good idea :)
Then again, if the back is inaccessable without a key anyway, they could just not have any locks in the back panels of the machine at all.-- Dickcheney6, Oct 05 2008 the cafeteria was recently remodeled. it doesn't have the jukebox anymore.-- Dickcheney6, Feb 22 2009 It's because you guys were fighting over it so much.-- bungston, Feb 22 2009 I removed the shocking button part of this idea. I had stopped playing music on that thing several months before they took it out.
I'm actually GLAD the dam thing is gone. The people who screwed around with it would actually sit RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT and then complain that it was too loud or they hated the music that someone picked, etc.-the jukebox is all the way on one side of the cafeteria, and the area is big enough such that if you didn't like the music, you could move all the way to the other side of the cafeteria and you'd be totally out of the "music radius"-it's not like it was piped through speakers that surrounded the whole cafeteria, it only came from the machine itself.
When I talked to the office about that issue they actually got really pissed off at me-just for saying the cafeteria supervisors should do something about it! I'm not kidding. I DID NOT ask them to modify the machine itself in any way,shape or form. So phooey on the cafeteria jukebox. I'll just bring my own CD walkman.-- Dickcheney6, Mar 07 2009 You could always try hitting them over the head with a jukebox...-- wagster, Mar 07 2009 ± I had to use the plus / minus. I can't find the plus symbol on this interface. Your user name drew my instant ire, though. Palpatine6-- Zimmy, Mar 08 2009 What have you lot got against Dick Cheney? Brilliant military strategist and architect of global economic prosperity - give him a sainthood, I say.-- wagster, Mar 08 2009 Perhaps a capacitor or small battery would be the best way to deal with people unplugging it. It wouldn't stop them doing it, but the music would continue to play until the song finished.
Volume control really should be supervisor only in a place like a school. Just place the volume knob inside the machine so you can only access it if you can also access the money inside.-- Bad Jim, Mar 08 2009 Nice idea (bad jim) one way to do it would be to remove the actual knob (but not the volume control wiring or the mechanics that the knob was connected to), and then issue a tool to the staff that could fit into the whole where the knob was, allowing the staff to adjust the volume.
If you read the idea itself, you'd know that the machine from this idea would "remember" the song that it was playing so that it'd restart the same song when it was replugged. This would be accomplished by memory which was kept alive by some sort of back up power source-like a backup battery like you said.
But they could have done the aformentioned "hinged bar" thing with no modifications to the machine itself, and no special machine would be needed.
Of course, the easiest solution would have been to impose some sort of penalty to people who interrupted other people's selections-like you have to eat lunch in the principal's office the next day-with the song you interrupted playing over and over again on a CD player in the room!
But, as I said before, such a policy wouldn't be enforced because the cafeteria supervisors pay no attention to it whatsoever, even if a student openly complains to them that someone turned it off on them, it's broken, etc. the administrators get really really pissed off when people would mention anything reguarding people being jerks in the lunchroom with the machine.-- Dickcheney6, Mar 08 2009 OCCASIONAL or even SPORRADIC capitalisation can be JUST as ANNOYING as full CAPITALISATION.
-el custard gutso-- Custardguts, Mar 08 2009 Is it your impression that the community here is so feeble that they confuse easily?-- Custardguts, Mar 09 2009 random, halfbakery