Measure noise levels in your home with the Hello Light

After realizing that asking his kids to keep the noise down was meaningless without some sort of standard, maker Jeremy S. Cook decided to construct the “Hello Light.”
This cylindrical device measures sound with an electret microphone and an Arduino Nano, then commands a set of RGBW lights to progressively light up depending on the noise level.

In the end, the Hello Light eventually ended up as more of a game to see who could trigger the flashing volume limit warning—not particularly effective for its intended purpose. It does, however, make a fun interactive decoration, and also features a random lighting mode, and a slowly blinking white light setting.
Code for the project is available on GitHub, and the build process can be seen in the clip below.
October 3rd, 2018 at 21:10:00
As a teacher, I am familiar with that problem of kids having fun trying for the max volume alert 🙂
If you could add a light display which starts as a full bar graph, and light is subtracted every time sound goes over a pre-set, I think kids would respond (esp. if there was an award for some level achieved).
Great looking project!!
Emma
October 5th, 2018 at 16:24:35
What about reversing the concept?
You only receive a full activation of light when the microphone is picking up silence, and every time the noise levels increase, the brightness and color-diversity of the lights decrease, with a specific period of time (say, thirty seconds) of silence needed to bring back the full capacity of your rainbow light.
-Gabe
October 5th, 2018 at 19:05:54
shaher
October 5th, 2018 at 19:06:20
fijkdngkvn
October 5th, 2018 at 21:39:55
Ur mom Gay
October 5th, 2018 at 21:41:05
eat my soul plz
October 7th, 2018 at 21:26:49
@clokkz
Makes sense. Lights are more exciting than no lights. Making the lights turn off instead of on would emphasize the original purpose.
October 17th, 2018 at 00:55:59
lazerbeam for the win boys
October 17th, 2018 at 01:00:09
hi
October 17th, 2018 at 01:02:36
that is lit 🙂