A Wireless Sound Alert and Person Identity Notification

System for People with Hearing Disabilities

K. Padma Vasavi

Professor, Department of ECE, SVECW, Bhimavaram, India

padmavasaviece@svecw.edu.in

Abstract. Over 10% of the worlds population: 800 million people are suffering
from hearing loss, and if they were to all come together they would be the third
largest nation in the world. Current production of hearing aids meets less than
10% of global need. About one out of forty people have hearing aids in devel-
oping countries. Moving in traffic without anybodys help and calling others
who are not in distance reachable by hand is a major problem faced by hearing
and speech impaired people. The aim of the paper t is to enable the hearing and
speech impaired people recognize the horn sound of vehicles and make their in-
teraction easy with other people having similar disabilities.
So, to address this problem there is a need for a device which can assist the
hearing challenged people responding to important sounds. This paper proposes
a sound alert system which can detect horn sound and gives an alert, and also it
can help them in calling one another, when they are in indoor environment. The
sound alert system works with the help of microphone, an analog circuit and a
Micro Controller Unit in traffic mode, on the other hand with the help of a wire-
less communication module in the interaction mode

Keywords: Hearing and Speech impairment; horn sound; interaction; vibration

alert

1 Introduction

The major problem faced by hearing impaired people is, going into traffic without
anybodys help. This is because, they cant hear horn sounds. The person who whis-
tles horn expects the other to move aside. As the hearing challenged person is not able
to hear that sound, there is a chance for accidents. Also, the hearing impaired people
cannot listen if someone is calling him from behind.
So, the hearing challenged people need a device which can help him to respond to
different sounds as well as a call from others. This purpose can be served by using a
device with a microphone and Xbee modules to help respond to different sounds
especially in traffic and to interact easily with other hearing impaired people
respectively.
The existing assistive devices for deaf are very less in number and they can help
only those with less than 20% hearing loss. In addition to this, most of them are very
expensive. They are not available and affordable for the common man. As a result,

adfa, p. 1, 2011.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
most of the hearing challenged people from the developing countries are unable to get
benefit out of any of these devices. The wrist band that interprets sound for the deaf is
a device which gives the pictorial depiction of wide variety of sounds like ringing of
telephone, music, door bell, horn etc. It also alerts deaf people in danger by vibrating
and helps them view a pictorial depiction. The wrist band doesnt work alone; it is
complemented by a micro device which can be worn on the belt. The Micro device
records sound first interprets it and then sends a pictorial message, which can be
viewed on the screen of the wrist watch. The watch even vibrates in case of danger
[1].
The wristband discussed above cannot respond to more than one sound at a time
and so ignores the other sounds heard at that time. So, there are maximum chances
that, the device ignores important sounds like horn. Also, the device vibrates for many
kinds of sounds. So, it will be vibrating almost continuously causing great
inconvenience to the user. This paper proposes a sound alert system for them which
can detect horn sound and gives an alert, and also it can help them call one another,
when they are in indoor environment. The sound alert system works with the help of
microphone, an analog circuit and a Micro Controller Unit in traffic mode, and with
the help of a wireless communication module in the interaction mode.

2 Proposed Solution

The system level diagram of Sound Alert System (SASY) is shown in Fig. 18.3.It has
a display and some push button switches. The display shows the time as well as the
number corresponding to the person who is trying to call this device.
The switches consists of 0-9 numbers for the purpose of calling any person in the
interaction mode and also two additional switches P and M. The switch P is used
as a power button i.e., to switch the device ON and OFF. The switch M is used as
mode control button i.e., to switch the device from traffic mode to normal mode and
viceversa.
The device, when in the traffic mode, vibrates if there any horn sound around it
and when in the normal mode, transmits a signal to the corresponding person when
any switch is pressed and vibrates if it receive a signal
.

LCD Unit

Switches to call others

Mode selection
Power
switch
button

Fig. 1. Outer Case Design of Proposed Solution

 The proposed solution has two modes of operation namely Traffic Mode and
interaction Mode. Mode selection switch is used to switch between the two modes.
The description of the sub-systems in Traffic Mode is given below:

2.1 Traffic Mode:

As the input need for the system is sound, there is a need to convert it into electrical
signal, in order to perform any manipulations on the input and use it to control the
output. So, the microphone is to be used as input device, to convert the input sound
into electrical signal. In case of using a microphone, noise comes into picture for sure.
The easiest process to reduce noise is to eliminate the unwanted frequencies. A band
pass filter can efficiently perform this action. It can attenuate the lower and higher
unwanted frequencies and allow only the range of frequencies that are selected. The
amplitude of the signal obtained from the microphone is very less and is not enough
to drive the microcontroller. So, the amplifier section should be used to amplify the
signal and bring it to the operating voltage range of microcontroller. The output is to
be energized only when the input level is above the threshold level. So microcontrol-
ler is used to perform this control operation. As the user of the device is a hearing
impaired person, vibration is the best way to give alert. So, micro vibration motor is
required at the output.

2.2 Interaction mode:

In traffic mode, the microphone takes the sound as input and it converts it into volt-
age. A filter is used to eliminate the unwanted frequencies. The pre-amplifier ampli-
fies this voltage signal and give it as input to microcontroller. The microcontroller
compares the input voltage level with the fixed threshold level, which is fixed such
that the microcontroller gives the output to the vibrator only when the input sound is
too high, approximately above 85db.
In interaction mode, the input from microphone will not affect any output of the
micro controller. In this mode, when a particular switch is pressed, the transmitter
sends the signal to all the receivers but only the controller corresponding to that
switch will respond by activating the vibrator and display, which shows the number
corresponding to the person whose system transmitted the signal.
The block diagram of proposed system in interaction and traffic mode is shown in
Fig,2.
 Fig. 2. Block Diagram of Sound Alert System

3 Implementation

The implementation of proposed system is divided into two parts:

Hardware implementation Software implementation

3.1 Hardware Implementation

Fig.3 shows the schematic of the Sound Alert System. The schematic is drawn us-
ing the TINA software. In the circuit microphone is connected as input device. Its
output is connected to the band pass filter that is implemented using LM324. The
output of the filter is obtained at pin 7 of LM324 [2]. The output of the filter is given
to the amplifier which is implemented using the third opamp in the IC LM324. So, the
input to the amplifier is given from the 7th pin of the same IC. 8th pin of LM324 is
the output of the amplifier. The output of the amplifier is given to P1.3 of the micro-
controller MSP430G2553 [3].

Fig. 3. Schematic of Sound Alert System

The encoder HT12E [4] is connected to the RF Transmitter [5]. All the data pins of
the encoder are provided with switches connecting to ground except one data pin.
This is done because the data pins are low when the receiver is in off state and also
when the corresponding pins are connected to ground. If the receiver is ON and no
signal is received they are in high state by default. So, avoid the confusion, on pin
(pin 10) is left free as reference. Whenever the receiver is ON, this pin goes high and
at the same time all the other data pins go high. This give 11 condition at the micro-
controller input. But when the switch corresponding to the device is pressed the data
pin gets connected to ground and transmits a 0. So, when required switch is pressed
the microcontroller gets 10 conditions from 10th and 11th pins of encoder. The micro-
controller is programmed to activate the vibrator and show the senders number on
receiving this 10 condition. The vibrator is connected to P1.0 of MSP430G2553 and
P2 is completely used for to control the LCD.

3.2 Software Implementation

Fig. 4. Flowchart for Software Implementation

 The device works in two modes (traffic mode and interaction mode). The system
first checks whether the traffic mode is ON or not. If the traffic mode is ON, the input
sound is compared with the threshold and the output terminal is activated if input is
greater than the threshold value. If the traffic mode is OFF, the device again checks
whether any number is pressed. If the number is pressed, it transmits the correspond-
ing data. If no number is pressed, it checks whether any signal is received. If any sig-
nal is receive, the device performs the action implied by the data. If the device doesnt
receive any signal, the device again goes to initial state and checks for the mode again

4 Results

Analog discovery kit (ADK) has been used to test the hardware at different stages of
experiment. ADK is portable device with oscilloscope, function generator, DC sup-
plies and all other basic devices that are required for an electronics lab. We have test-
ed the microphone, filter, amplifier and transmitter receiver pair using the oscillo-
scope available in ADK. Figures shown below are the waveforms obtained at differ-
ent stages.

Fig. 5. Output of the amplifier Fig. 6. Transmitter Output Fig. 9. Receiver Output

Fig. 10. PCB of Sound Alert System Fig.11. Sound Alert System with User

The output of the amplifier is shown in Fig.7. The orange color waveform shows the
signal from microphone and the blue color waveform shows the amplified output. The
waveforms in Fig.8 and Fig.9 represent the data bits being transmitted by the RF
transmitter and the data bits being received by the RF receiver respectively. It can be
observed that both the waveforms are very similar to each other which show that the
transmission is perfect. Finally, the PCB of Sound Alert System is shown in Fig.10
and the product with the end user is shown in Fig.11 respectively,

5 Conclusion

A wireless Sound Alert and person identity notification system for hearing
challenged people is developed. It is tested for its working both under laboratory
conditions and under real world conditions and is found to be working satisfactorily.
It is distributed to our clients at Sri Venkateswara Deaf School and they have been
using it with full efficiency for the past six months.

Acknowledgements

The author wish to express her profound sense of gratitude to Sri. K. V. Vishnu
Raju garu Chairman, SVES, for his encouragement towards innovation and research.
She also would like to express her sincere thanks to Sri Ravichandran Rajagopal,
Vice-Chairman, SVES, for supporting at all times of need. She also would like to
thank Dr. G. Srinivasa Rao garu, Principal, SVECW for facilitating with a good
research environment.

References
1. Konstantin Datz, The wrist Band that Interprets sound for the Deaf Deaf Times,2010
2. www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm124-n.pdf
3. www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/msp430g2553.pdf
4. www.farnell.com/datasheets/57850.pdf
5. www.farnell.com/datasheets/56723.pdf