I did an experiment where I lived for awhile with a sony recorder/mic on me 24/7. It was nice to be able to refer back to conversations and events when I wanted them. Biggest issue was sorting through the data-- timestamps and recorder bookmarks were OK but I really needed full text search on the audio. It would have been great to tag via `Robert, mark timestamp, end Robert`. AI seems to be required, especially when dealing with wind noise and other issues (like the mic twisting around and all of a sudden one channel is my heartbeat.)
The sony voice recorder out there easily last 24 hrs on 1 AAA battery.. dumping to mp3 on a large sd card.
I did a similar experiment in about 2005 using a small iRiver iFP [1] and reached the same conclusion.
It needed a physical "Something interesting just happened" button that could be annotated later. At the time, creating custom hardware as well as the entire software/service stack was more than I was willing to bite off.
The iFP is tiny, roughly a 4" long by 1.5-2" cylinder. It easily covered a full day, the silence detection worked great, and quality was fine when used in a pocket or on a belt. Basically, the stuff that I expected to be difficult was already solved.
The sony voice recorder out there easily last 24 hrs on 1 AAA battery.. dumping to mp3 on a large sd card.