It's working!

Our glasses are working! Although we found a funny mistake that we made while assembling both of the circuits, their second op-amps were disconnected! However, this is great as we can reduce the size of the two separate circuits to fit on one "breadboard" and make the device more portable (now it can be carried in a shirt pocket).

The weight is also not too bad, at around the same weight as the 9v battery it needs for power, here's some images of the final production of the SoundSense Glasses!

After this circuit board was reduced in size and wires run, we ran the wires to the glasses and attached the LEDs and microphones:

We then tested it out to see if it worked in this short video:

Finally, Tasneem and Peter modelled the glasses for us in class.

Some fun facts:

• After a capacitor had slipped out of the board it was reconnected in the wrong place and fried one of our LEDs, oops!
• We also fried a 2N4402 NPN transistor
• We spent hours attempting to find why the circuit wouldn't work at first, this is probably related to accidentally bypassing the second Op-Amp

Development phase

We started developing the circuit from the example and luckily were able to find all the components we needed in the donated electronics kit, saving us around $3 towards development costs. This is even luckier as otherwise we bought the glasses for $5, a microphone for $9.99, and a pack of battery connectors for $4.99, making the "total" cost $19.99, one penny short of the limit.

While trying to re-create the circuit from Instructables we tweaked the capacitors and resistors until it worked well with a 6v power source made from two 3V CR 2032 batteries.

After some hours of trial and error, were able to get the circuits lighting up to sound! Here is a video of our progress so far showing the varying light levels and 6v power source in action:

With the circuits working, we aim to bring the size down to fit on a single board. However, we have found some bugs/changes to be made in the final prototype:

• The 9v battery has better performance than the 6v supply, so this will be the power source of choice
• A variable resistor does not affect the circuit enough to accurately set sensitivity, so there will instead be a mechanical way to alter the angle of the microphones as needed.
• The LEDs are very directional, so these too will need to be adjustable to the viewers' comfort

Materials mostly ready & Friday meetup

Hi guys,

With just under 5 days left here's where we are at:

I've had some donations to our project from a friend (who gave us his whole electrical kit from when he was in college), and the nice guys at Letterbox games store who gave me some old microphones (large style, but maybe we can get parts from them) from Singstar for PS2.

This means we have nearly everything we need now, probably just need a soldering iron, circuit board (might not be needed), and soldering wire to start piecing it together, although we don't have many op-amps so we'll need to take care in testing the circuitry.

Are we all good to meet up Friday again at 4pm to discuss this, and figure out how we'll be assembling the parts?

In the mean time, here's an image of all the development materials we have, the total paid components would be only the LED + battery combo packs (at $2.97 each + tax), and the extra PC microphone (small black one, the small white one is broken from my closet, but I think the microphone piece will still work).

First draft of the sound sensing glasses

Here's the first draft of our idea we came up with in class today:

Name: Not sure yet, SoundSense?

1. What is it?
An attachment for glasses, or at least using the frame of a pair of glasses, to mount LED's on each side of the wearers head, which are then wired to microphones on each side of the head.

The microphones pick up sound levels, and depending on a sensitivity switch on the side, will change brightness for each LED respectively.

In order to only show sounds beside and behind the wearer, the microphone should also have a small cone to direct sound input from the sides and back.

2. How do we build it?
I think we can do this with some basic electric components, including 2 microphones, 2 LED's, some wires, and a variable resistor. We have some contacts who know electrical stuff that might be able to give us some insight into the circuitry.

We will also need to decide on battery size, I'm currently thinking two watch batteries on each side of the glasses might work, but I'm not sure how much power will be drawn by the microphone and LEDs.

Lastly, we need to make sure it looks good, so once we get the components working we can modify the design to make it more discrete.

3. How do we test it?
We should probably test it by using ear plugs, if it can alert us to nearby cars/trucks, or other loud noises behind and beside us, then it should be useful for people who are hard of hearing.

It should also avoid being too distracting

4. How do we market it?
I think we should expect this to be a successful product if it works, so maybe we should prepare some marking plan and basic advertising videos and material. Maybe we can help the world with this!

And finally, here's a kind of "first concept" sketch, very rough but showing the placement of important components: