Raspberry Pi Hearing Tester

The first semester project I did was in a project group with 6 of my fellow students. The frame of the project was to get started with electronics, microcontrollers and single board computers. Being at Aalborg University, the project also had to relate the the UN World Goals. We decided on a project that would help uncover hearing disabilities and educate young people in the public schools. The below is the abstract from the project report

This study examines the possible link between young people’s hearing habits through headphones with higher volume than recommended and hearing damage. Furthermore, it is examined which actions should be taken to reduce the risks of developing hearing loss at a young age. The study is using questionnaire and previous studies as well as research papers to identify the factors which are responsible for hearing loss and to what extent young people damaging their hearing is a problem. Furthermore, this study seeks to explain whether a technological solution can reduce the number of young people developing hearing loss. The best technical solution for this project, given the length of the project and technological and economical means, turns out to be a hearing test. The test is meant to be accessible for everyone and can help or encourage the buyer to seek medical help if the test shows any sign of hearing loss. The test will also collect data, which will be stored in a database that will contribute to national statistics regarding the number of Danes who suffer from hearing loss, since this type of data is sparse.

We used a Raspberry Pi with a touch screen interface to run a hearing test. The test itself was based on the same testing techniques used in professional hearing clinics. We did a lot of measurements in the universities sound proof audio lab, in order to get the most accurate sound representation in our device headset.