OpenAcoustics MicroMoth Contact Microphone: Wearable Acoustic Sensor Proposal
Figure 1: MicroMoth Hardware
Advisors: Richard Hahnloser
Contact: Etay Yacov (eyacov@ethz.ch), Jacob Ayers (jayers@ethz.ch)
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich and Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Institute of Neuroinformatics and National Centre of Competence in Research - Evolving Language
Background
The AudioMoth is a compact, low-cost, open‑source acoustic monitoring device designed by Open Acoustic Devices and born from research at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford. This device has been utilized in tasks that require environmental audio recordings, such as tracking migratory birds, wildlife studies, and detecting gunshots to prevent poaching. Our research group is interested in signal processing tasks such as sound source channel separation. We have experimented with solutions to this task using contact microphones that measure the vibrations of a body instead of acoustic sound waves. We see a lot of potential in making a new version of the AudioMoth that would allow recordings with contact microphones and acoustic microphones simultaneously.
Objective
The current version of the AudioMoth contains a connection to a single audio jack or an on-board MEMs microphone, the Micromoth only has a MEMs microphone, and both are limited to mono recordings. The goals of the project is to implement stereo functionality on the the AudioMoth platform that would allow us to record from multiple microphones at the same time with the device. This could come in the form of building an alternative PCB or adjusting one of the existing platforms. The project encompasses the following tasks:
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- Updating current audio jack to hardware that is currently supported.
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- Amending PCB files to allows multi-microphone connections.
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- Amending the firmware of the device to allows for stereo recordings, adjusting recording parameters.
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- adding GUI functionality allow for stereo recordings ease of use.
Challenges
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- There is no guarantee that over the span of a Master’s that there will be an opportunity to test on animals in the field.
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- Hard to come up with a design that we think will generalize to different species.
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- Want to restrict ourselves to contact microphones that we believe have long-term support.
Learning Objectives
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- PCB Hardware development
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- Firmware Development
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- Digital Signal Processing
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- Field Device Development
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- Wearable Sensors
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- 3D Modeling + Printing (For Hardware Enclosure)
References