Virtual Docent Museum tours on your device

Rich museum tours—built once, enjoyed offline

Virtual Docent connects visitors with curated exhibit stories through narration, images, and flexible ways to find the next stop. Museums and partners publish tour packages to the cloud; the iOS app installs them for use on the floor without relying on venue Wi‑Fi.

Explore the visitor app How publishing works

What Virtual Docent is

Virtual Docent is a product family from Desert Gadgets: a visitor-facing iPhone app and a Mac-based content pipeline for museums, aquariums, historic sites, and cultural venues. Each venue ships as a self-contained package with a manifest, images, and optional narration—designed so tours keep working after download, even when connectivity is poor.

Phase 1: offline-first tours

After a package installs into on-device storage, exhibit media and narration load from local files. Network access is for catalog browsing and downloads—not for every tap on the tour floor.

Publisher-controlled updates

Versioned packages and a remote venue index let you add or refresh museums by uploading to S3 and syncing the catalog—without waiting on an app update for each new partner.

Demonstration projects

Several public demo tours showcase the format (aquariums, aviation heritage, and more). A separate Arizona Museum of Natural History import project in the repo illustrates large-scale website-to-tour conversion.

Virtual Docent for iPhone

The iOS app is the visitor experience: discover venues, install tour packages, and explore exhibits at your own pace.

Browse Museums

When S3 catalog settings are configured, the app loads a live venues.json index, supports search, and downloads the selected VirtualDocentPackage.zip into secure on-device storage.

Download & install

Install tours from the online catalog or scan a venue QR code that points at a package zip. After installation, return home and tap Start Tour.

Tour entry

Each venue manifest declares which input methods are active: exhibit number keypad, QR scanning, NFC tags, and (reserved) proximity. Shake or wrist motion can open the QR scanner during a tour.

Exhibit detail

Hero images, descriptions, bundled narration, and optional “more information” text—with read-aloud using device text-to-speech when narration files are not attached.

Creator tools (Mac)

Content is authored outside the iOS app using desktop tools in the Virtual Docent Asset Generator workspace—export, validate, then publish.

Primary

Virtual Docent Asset Builder

macOS app for museum staff and publishers:

  • Venue info, exhibits, linked assets, tour settings
  • Validation before export; integrity checks on packages
  • Optional AI narration (OpenAI) and background music export
  • Direct S3 upload with publish metadata (publish_info.json)
  • Builds venue catalog fragments for the live app index
New

Virtual Docent Museum Scraper

Standalone macOS app that crawls a museum’s public website, extracts visitor-facing content, and emits a .virtualdocentproject plus assets—the same import shape as the repo’s Python Stage‑1 builders, with a GUI and configurable crawl settings.

Repo tools

Python import builders

Command-line Stage‑1 pipelines (large crawls stored on external media per project policy):

  • AZMNH — build_azmnh_virtual_docent_import.py from mirrored www.azmnh.org content
  • Exploratorium — build_exploratorium_virtual_docent_import.py for exploratorium.edu
Catalog sync

sync-venue-catalog.py

Scans exported publish_info.json files, regenerates Documentation/venues.json, and copies indexes to each venue folder on S3 so the iOS app always reads current museum lists.

Publishing & live catalog

Tour packages and indexes are hosted on Amazon S3 under a shared Virtual-Docent/ prefix. The iOS app reads HTTPS URLs configured in app Info.plist—no rebuild required when you add museums.

Author

Create or import a .virtualdocentproject in Asset Builder; attach images, narration, QR/NFC values, and venue metadata.

Export & validate

Produce VirtualDocentPackage.zip with venue_manifest.json, images/, and optional audio/.

Upload

Publish to S3 via Asset Builder; write publish_info.json alongside the zip with version and exhibit counts.

Sync catalog

Run sync-venue-catalog.py to refresh venues.json and per-venue index copies the app fetches at runtime.

Typical S3 layout

s3://azmnh/Virtual-Docent/
  venues.json                          ← optional root index
  montery-bay/monterey-bay-aquarium/
    VirtualDocentPackage.zip
    publish_info.json
    venues.json                        ← per-folder index copy
  National Aquarium/national-aquirium-virtual-docent-demo/
    …
App plist key Purpose
VenueS3BaseURL HTTPS root of the bucket (e.g. https://azmnh.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com)
VenueS3Prefix Folder containing museum packages (default Virtual-Docent/)
VenueCatalogURL Optional direct URL to root venues.json

Tour package format

Every installable venue is a zip whose root contains a manifest and media folders. Paths in JSON are relative to the package root.

Layout

VirtualDocentPackage/
  venue_manifest.json
  images/
  audio/          ← optional narration

Manifest highlights

  • venueId, venueName, venueType, version
  • availableInputMethods — manual number, QR, NFC, proximity flags
  • exhibits[] — numbers, QR/NFC payloads, image and audio paths, more info text

Full schema documentation lives in the Virtual Docent repo: Documentation/VenuePackageFormat.md.

For museums & partners

Virtual Docent is under active development. If you represent a venue interested in pilot tours, custom branding, or private package hosting, reach out to discuss scope, rights clearance, and deployment.

Email Desert Gadgets

App Store availability and pricing may change independently of this site. Demo package links point at third-party cloud storage; availability depends on bucket policies and network conditions.