Vox machina

user microphone
microcontroller and feedback device
surrounding noise microphone
feedback device
entire setup

Inspiration

Generally, People with Parkinson's disease are not able to perceive their own loudness and pitch, Our primary motivation is to help people with Parkinson's to speak with confidence by providing the right vocal feedback without distracting or disrupting their conversation.

What it does

Assist Parkinson's patients to have normal conversations by providing real-time feedback to increase their voice loudness and clarity. The device monitors the user's voice loudness and compares it with the noise level of the surroundings and intimates the user with the help of vibration to maintain their voice in the optimum loudness level

How I built it

We used Arduino mega to compare the signals of 2 microphones. One for recording the user's voice loudness and another to monitor the surrounding noise when the user's voice is found to be too low or too high than appropriate loudness for the scenario the device intimates the user with the help of vibrotactile feedback.

Challenges I ran into

The microphone sensitivity was too low for our application and we faced difficulties in finding a quiet place to tune the microphone and simulate the required white noise for testing the device.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were able to create the proof of concept in a day and our PoC met all the core functional requirements discussed during brainstorming and we also managed to address shortcomings of existing products in the market