Sistema wireless de aquisição e sinalização de eventos sonoros para deficientes auditivos

Abstract

This paper addresses the prototype development of an event acquisition and signaling system focusing on the needs of the hearing impaired on a household level. The hearing impaired add up to about 5.3% of the world's population (WHO, 2012). Some of the assistive technologies for this class of people are hearing aids, cochlear implants and signaling systems. This work proposes a wireless event sounder that includes the main sounds emitted in homes. The system was composed of two categories of devices: the sensor stations, which constantly monitor the environment for registered sound events, and the user-friendly alert device who signals those events recognition through a graphical interface and a vibracall. This made it possible to inform guest arrival (monitoring the bell and knockings on the door), warn of dangers and prevent setbacks. The devices were developed using microcontrollers and embedded modules for capture and sound recognition and wireless communication. Components such as displays and buttons were added to make user interaction easier. Tests were made to determine the performance of the system in two specific areas: the range of its wireless communication on indoor environments and the performance of the speech recognition module used. The results allowed to validate the concept of an alert system for the hearing impaired, but showed that wireless communication is compromised quickly when there are many rooms between devices. The performance of the recognizer module is acceptable, however it has limitations on the number of simultaneously recognizable sound events. Future work should focus on improving these factors.