Inspiration
I chose this project because I love music, and I wanted to combine my passion for music with coding and create something functional
After coding and building, I was eventually able to create the smart earrings, which I tested with my piano.
What it does
A sound-sensitive LED (built with 10 RGB LEDs) bar as an earring
The earrings “hear” (or records) ambient sound and emits lights according to its volume
The amount of lights and the colors that flash are intentional, and depend on the intensity of the sound
How we built it
To build my project, I used a Raspi Zero and pin wires to connect the code to the earrings, I used a LED bar - Seeedstudio Grove LED bar, which acted as the earring, a microphone to pick up on the ambient sound, and an earring hook to turn the LED bar into an actual piece of jewelry.
These are only the physical materials I used to create my project, other than for example my coding platform.
To connect the physical components of my project, I used pin wires and connected the LED bar to the Raspi Zero so the code could reach the LEDs. Then, with an adapter, I connected the microphone to Raspi Zero so the code for the microphone would let it function. Finally, I put an earring hook to the LED bar to turn it into an earring.
The first picture of the left fully shows the Rasberry Pi being connected to the LED bar, while the one of the right shows specifically how the wires are aligned to make the LED bar function.
The software is essentially the code, and makes the microphone record ambient sound every 0.1 seconds.
It finds the highest amplitude (volume level) in the recorded sound wave and flashes specific lights based on the intensity
Although I tested the code and the earrings with my piano, my voice, and other sounds like clapping and stomping set off the earrings as well.
By doing this, it can pick up on sounds that happen almost instantly and project it onto the lights at the same time.
I chose colors specifically because low and softer colors are usually associated with dark blue and purple. While higher and louder colors are usually associated with red and yellow.
These colors are placed on the LED bar almost like a scale, so the louder the sounds are, the more the lights flash, making the main color red and orange, while if there is little to no sound, and main colors are darker blues and purples.
Challenges we ran into
In the beginning it was difficult to connect the microphone and the code and have it actually pick up the ambient sound, but i was able to eventually overcome it.
What's next for Smart Earring: Sound-Sensitive LEDs
For the future and next steps of my project, I thought that expanding this project to a possible small group musical number, creating a light show with multiple instruments would be very fun and interesting to create.
By doing this, the deliberate and very important intensity change and musicality can be seen clearer and can make music more compelling and understandable to others.
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