Pickup will have a built-in sound level sensor. This will not recognize sounds, only volume (to preserve privacy and battery life). Help us tune it — how do you anticipate using it?
Do you have any specific use cases? Reply below.
I’m interested to see if I can relate water flow over a shoals with the level of sound.
I want to measure human activity in a room.
Monitor sounds status - is the fire alarm going off? Generator running etc
I’m planning to use the Pickup to monitor conditions in a beehive. Temperature and humidity are the main metrics I want to collect, over time, but a sudden increase in noise levels might well give me an indication that the colony is thinking of swarming.
I’m building a sound isolated music studio. In addition to tracking temperature and humidity (my original use case), I’d love to also track sound pressure levels. Now I’ll probably get 2, so I can measure the sound inside the isolated space for hearing health, and outside the space for neighbors’ mental health.
That’s a good idea, hearing heath in the studio. We were thinking of the same for workplaces with loud machines so that you could monitor to OSHA standards, figure out when people need to rest their ears, etc.
I also want to test the effectiveness of soundproofing I added in the gaps around a door. With a music studio, you can empirically test what materials are most effective.
Is this for knowing when a dry creek has water in it?
It has water flowing all the time but the sound level changes significantly with the amount.
We have a flow gage on this particular creek and I was wondering if there would be a strong enough correlation to use sound in places where there isn’t a permanent gage.
Interesting experiment, for sure. Flow meters are also interesting—what model do you use?
I want to get notified when the fan in my laser cutter turns off after a job is completed.
This a a really good use! Would love to know the health of my hive remotely!
You might also have a good source of randomness there. You couuld sell hours of audio to your friendly neighbourhood cryptographer!
Something from Rainbird I think
Grounds maintenance sends me a spreadsheet once a month
Been giving this some thought. I think Pickup could be a great Hive monitor. Need the temp and humidity sensors. Then if I can remove the sound level sensor or add an additional one, I can graph the hive sound. It should be a regular identifiable pattern. If the pattern changes its time for a checkup. Also with the breakout board could do some 3.3V load cells and make a hive scale. All the systems out there are cloud connected and have subscriptions. The hardware is super expensive. This might be my first project!