Back to: Multiplier Event Luxembourg
According to David Novak, “music is constituted by beautiful, desirable sounds, and noise is composed of sounds that are unintentional and unwanted”, such as the rustle of leaves in a quiet forest (\(\sim\)15 dB), busy traffic on roadways (\(\sim\)80 dB), or the take-off of jet aircraft (\(\sim\)140 dB).
In this activity,
- ambient noise and sounds are detected,
- their loudness is measured and
- visually displayed 1) through a plot and 2) through a series of NeoPixels.
The Circuit Playground Express board includes a sound sensor (MEMS microphone) used with CircuitPython to sense both amplitude and frequency and plot sound levels. This microphone is sensitive to 100 Hz – 10.000 Hz audio frequencies.
Depending on the slide switch, the Circuit Playground Express board will write the sound level values to
- the serial console if the switch is towards the left or
- the CircuitPython storage if the switch is towards the right.
