Start Menu.
After Recording starts. Gives ambient noise and current volume of phone.
Settings Menu, Users can adjust the sensitivity and set limits on volume. Speaker mode allows audio to play louder as you get further away

Smart Tune

The app for not constantly touching the volume button

Inspiration

Your auditory environment is constantly subject to rapid change. How often it occurs that you are listening to a podcast or jamming out to some music when someone just has to interrupt you to tell you about the most irrelevant news. If only you could raise the volume on your phone without risking offending them.

Imagine you are blasting some tunes on your speaker while doing homework but hunger starts to creep in. As you head to the kitchen to make a sandwich you realize you can barely hear the music - it's the best part of the song. You can't immediately reach your phone for the volume button because your hands are covered in mayonnaise and Alexa can't hear you when she's so far away in your room. If only there were something that could automatically do this for you.

Our app, Smart Tune, handles this task so you don't have to.

What it does

There are two main situations:

When using headphones often external sounds can interfere with your listening experience. Smart Tune will automatically sense the rise in volume and adjust the volume accordingly.
When using speakers there are times when you have to move away from the speaker in order to go to the bathroom or do some chores. Smart Tune senses the decrease in ambient noise and raises the volume of the speaker to ensure you can always hear your favorite song.

How we built it

We built our app using Java in Android Studio. Since none of us have actually used Android Studios before, we start off learning the basics such as widgets, UI, permissions and threads. As we developed our program, we moved to more advance features that Android Studio has to offer: foreground services for the app to run as a background process, Shared preferences to store user settings, AsyncTask to update text dynamically and Media Recording. As the basic functionalities of measuring audio came into place, we delved into optimizing our statistical processing of audio data.

Challenges we ran into

Sleep Deprivation. (4h-7h ish per team member)
Setting up the Android Studio
Learning a new software and mobile platform
Optimization to assure a slick & smooth volume adjustment.
Using the wrong tools/methods due improper knowledge.
- Android 26+ kills background processes requiring a workaround for all background threads
- Attempted file writing multiple ways without setting permissions first. Later learned about sharedPreferences

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Working mobile app *Clean UI/UX and settings
Accessed hardware data properly
Successful at volume calibration based off of noise.
Probably the biggest java project completed(?) for all the team members.
Had Fun!

What we learned

Android Studio
Java development
Should have read Pattis Notes
"The effectsss of ssssleep deprivations" ~ Scott Buchmiller
" Caffeine does not work on me" ~ Ricky Yinan Xin
"Playing tetris is difficult with an injured thumb" ~ Ryan Yoshida
"I'm Stupid " x53 ~ Jason Zhu

What's next for Smart Tune

Cross platform to IOS and desktop
More cohesive volume adjustment algorithms
Convert app into widget form.
AI recognition to filter bad readings (and like do everything else)
Mad Money Makings

Built With

Submitted to

HackUCI 2020

Created by

Handled the logic for reading audio input from MediaRecorder library. Created custom Queue datatype for calculation of mean and median data statistics. Implemented functionality for the min/max volume as well as the sigmoid weighting function for volume adjustment.

Ryan Yoshida
I worked on multi-thread compatibility since our app relied on multiple threads and instances in order to work in the background. I also contributed to UI design by adding a timer and data meters. I was also new to android studio before this project, so a lot of my time was spend learning how to develop in a mobile environment.

Scott Buchmiller
I worked on updating audio channels, taking ambient noise and setting the media volume stream to appropriate levels. I also implemented the foreground service and notifications functionality which allows the app to run without interruption in the background. Near the end, I contributed in testing and debugging the app, as well as polishing up final UI features such as the app icon. This experience was the first time I worked with Android Studios extensively, so much of my time in the beginning was spent towards learning the development environment.

Ricky Xin
First time working w/ Android Studios . I contributed on UI/UX, managing and storing settings, and leading testing/debugging.

Jason Zhu
Second year CS major at UCI with an interest in algorithms, computer networking, and data science.