standalone storage device

[sparkyadam]

hello i am an installation electrician but i dont know anything about electronics so here goes....
what i want to do is build a device that will passively store information so i am guessing all this but i suppose i will need sum sort of chip to recieve the data via a fixed feed then output that to a chip which will then store it to sum sort of memory device for later retrieval??? any of this sound remotely correct? lol i have tried searching the internet but cant make head nor tail of it i doubt a pic has the power so do i just need to buy a fpga and program it or can i just build something using off the shelf components???(i am cluless to what exactly a pic or fpga is capable of btw) any help would be greatly appreciated thanks adam (data will be recieved in blocks of less than 1kb)

[Biffo]

what data do you want to store for a start?

If this data is can be stored as a sound file, effectively any sound recorder on the market could be then adapted to store your data.