top of page
Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship - Global Health
Designing an affordable infant hearing screening device for those in need in Latin America
Visible Light Communication: List
Affordable Design & Entrepreneurship (ADE) is my senior capston project class. In ADE, I collaborate with six other teammates from Olin College and Babson College to find communities who need equal opportunities that others are already receiving. My Global Health team is working with deaf communities and clinicians from Latin America to develop an affordable hearing screening test called otoacoustics emissions (OAE) screening. To do so, we are first developing an affordable distortion product OAE screening device that plays two pure tones in the ear and picks up distortion products generated from the vibrating hair cells in the inner ear.
​
As the technical member of the team, I have been testing with microscopic speakers and microphones that could be potentially used for this affordable device. I have interviewed audiologists and electrical engineering professors to learn about effective noise filtering algorithms for this device.
Visible Light Communication: Text
Visible Light Communication: Text
System Overview
Our current system consists of two speakers, one microphone, Arduino Uno, audio shield, and an computer. We play the two pure tones with our speaker and the microphone will pick up the audio signal. The audio shield will sample this signal and send it to computer so that we could analyze the signal that the microphone picks up.
Test Setup
We were specifically instructed by the manufacturer to solder litz wire onto the speakers and microphones. Due to the sensitivity and frailness of the device, we had to solder these wires onto the 0.04 inch by 0.04 inch solder pads by hand. Fortunately, they functioned on the first try!
​
Both the speakers and microphones are powered with Analog Discovery. The speakers are powered with wavegen function, were the speaker will play the pure tone with the frequency of the input square wave from the wavegen function. The microphones are powered with constant power supply and have a signal line that picks up audio signal. That audio signal was measured and saved with the scope function.
Data Analysis
We collected the data from the microphone and analyzed the frequencies present in the sound signal to validate the performance of the microphone. We also designed ideal passive filter that would allow the user to exclusively focus on the pure tones and distortion products.
bottom of page