Collaborate Disseminate
We are accustomed to medical devices being expensive, but sometimes the costs seem to far exceed reasonable expectations. At its most simplistic, a hearing aid should just be a battery, microphone, amplifier, and speaker, all wrapped in an enclosure, right? …read more
Continue reading It Costs WHAT?! A Sounding Into Hearing Aids
Of all of the things the wonderful human sense of hearing can do, one of my favorites is to listen to my friends talking. Unfortunately, some of my friends’ favorite places to do that talking in are noisy as hell. Some unspoken agreement among the hips… Continue reading Olive Pro wireless earbuds claim to amplify voices, cut out noise
Hearing aids are often stymied by the “cocktail party” effect, wherein they can’t amplify one person’s voice without also boosting the voices of everyone else in the room. A new AI system, however, could help focus the devices’ attention where it’s nee… Continue reading Brain-reading hearing aid tech homes in on speakers’ voices
If you’ve ever seen an experienced radio operator pull a signal out of the noise, or talked to someone in a crowded noisy restaurant, you know the human brain is excellent at focusing on a particular sound. This is sometimes called the cocktail party effect and if you wear a …read more
Even in noisy environments, most of us are able to understand what another person is saying by “focusing” our hearing on their voice. Although regular hearing aids are currently unable to do so, that may change if a new prototype reaches production.Con… Continue reading Voice-following hearing aid both reads and stimulates the brain
Imagine being asked to provide sound reinforcement for a meeting that occurs in a large room, where anyone can be the speaker, and in a situation where microphones would hinder the flow of the meeting. Throw in a couple of attendees who have hearing disabilities, and you’ve got quite a …read more
Continue reading Wire Loop And Amplifier Solve Audio Problem For The Hearing Impaired
If you’re the kind of person who’s serious about using open source software and hardware, relying on a medical device like a pacemaker or an insulin pump can be a particular insult. You wouldn’t trust the technology with your email, and yet you’re forced to put your life into the …read more
We are swimming in radio transmissions from all around, and if you live above the ground floor, they are coming at you from below as well. Humans do not have a sensory organ for recognizing radio signals, but we have lots of hardware which can make sense of it. The chances are good that you are looking at one such device right now. [Frank Swain] has leaped from merely accepting the omnipresent signals from WiFi routers and portable devices to listening in on them. The audio signals are mere soundwaves, so he is not listening to every tweet and email …read more
Hearing impairment, either partial or total, is a serious problem afflicting a large number of people. Almost 5% of the global population has some form of hearing disorder. For those affected by this disability from birth, it further impacts the development of language and speech abilities. In recent years, cochlear implants are increasingly being used to address this problem. These implants consist of two parts – the receiver and electrode array are implanted under the skin near the ear (with the electrode array terminating inside the Cochlea), while the microphone, electronics, transmitter and power source are attached on the outside. …read more
Hearing aids are probably more high-tech than you think. They are tiny. They have to go through a lot of trouble to prevent feedback. They need a long battery life. The good ones match their amplification to the inverse of your hearing loss (amplifying only the bands where you don’t hear as well).
[NotionSunday] put together a hearing amplifier project that probably doesn’t hit many of those design criteria. However, thanks to a 3D printed case, it looks pretty good. The device uses a dual opamp to boost the output from two microphones and feeds it to a conventional headphone. …read more
