About the Project
According to a study about voice disorders in teachers and the general population, about 18% of the 3 million U.S. teachers have to miss at least one day of work per year due to voice overuse. This is due to the characteristics of classroom environments, which includes student background noise that forces teachers to raise their voices. If the signal to noise ratio in the classroom between the students and the teacher is less than a certain threshold, this compromises the students’ ability to learn. Rather than amplifying the teacher’s voice and increasing the overall noise in the classroom, a better solution is to create a device that will let the students know when they are being too loud. ECE 480 Design Team 6 has successfully designed a device that uses two microphones and compares the dB SPL level of the students and the teacher. If background noise level is too high for acceptable speech intelligibility in the classroom, a red light is activated on a light display that serves as a visual cue to the students that they are being too loud. The classroom noise monitor successfully and accurately compares the different sound levels and does so at a cost of under $100.
Click the button below to look at videos of the project on Youtube!
YoutubeAbout the Team
Team Members (from left to right):
Eric Martoia - EE - Document Prep
William Miller - EE - Presentation Prep
Kaitlyn Perta - EE - Project Manager
Jon Gould - EE - Lab Coordinator
Brad Bukoski - CPE - Webmaster
Sponsor: Trifecta
Pasquale Bottalico
Simone Graetzer
Facilitator
Dr. John Deller