Amby | Devpost

Noise in an ambient range below the threshold - Blue led active
Noise below the threshold - Green leds blinking
Noise above the threshold - Red leds blinking
Amby Dashboard with overall statistics
Graph of noise level fluctuations in a given area

Inspiration

Our inspiration was two-fold. Our project has 2 core applications: helping people find quiet spaces to hang out with their quiet friends, and in other cases helping people, from gamers to party people, avoid noise complaints and upset neighbors :) We also want something portable, accessible, and customizable, unlike the expensive decibel trackers often found in machine rooms and workshops.

What it does

Our hardware can be modelled to fit both use cases. We have a responsive color gradient LED system that blinks when noise levels are below the user-specified loudness threshold. Further, our dashboard shows analytics for the quieter spots near you based on the noise recorded there over a period of time.

How we built it

We used an ESP32 board as the main component to create a clean circuit and make our vision of a color gradient noise detector come to life. We used fast api to create an efficient framework and integrate the HTML code for our website. We incorporated static charts into our project using Plotly, Matplotlib, and Pandas. And lots of tinkering and troubleshooting led us to creating an MVP that works!

Challenges we ran into

Learning on a time crunch proved to be harder than we had anticipated. Handling errors and roadblocks, like smoothing out regular disturbances from our microphone input, was rougher (pun intended) than it turned out to be while we were running low on sleep. Waking up with a fresh mind and getting technical (+ moral) support from the folks at the hardware table and the CICS makerspace was motivating.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a fully functioning circuit-related project with the potential for helping people. And getting to present a functioning project with a website and a tangible hardware component!

What we learned

Creating a website with interactive elements was lots of fun. Tinkering with circuits to get them to work in niche ways was also incredibly satisfying. Working with microcontrollers and associated devices felt like learning how to do magic.

What's next for Amby

Deploying our microcontrollers in many locations to have them send data via WiFi for displaying metrics dynamically on our website. Collecting user feedback and incorporating that to improve our product.