Sound Eclipse
Active noise cancellation for windows
Home noise cancellation systems are a promising application of the Active Noise Cancelling (ANC). Sound Eclipse is aiming to demonstrate this technology - a visualization of what such a device might look like in the future.
Sound Eclipse is a finalist of Lexus Design Award 2022. The research and the prototype were made in January - March 2022 thanks to the Lexus inc.
The noise
is the environmental problem that seems to be ignored. At least 1 in 5 humans on Earth suffers from elevated noise levels.
There's almost nowhere to hide from the everyday noise of cars, trains, motorcycles, roadworks, constructions in the city. Our homes can no longer protect us.
Urban noise has a lot of negative impact on health: cardio-vascular diseases, mental issues, headaches, memory and attention disorders. Recent studies have proven a connection between Alzheimer's disease and urban noise.
The idea
We came up with the idea of reducing noise using the phenomenon of interference - waves in antiphase suppressing each other. This technology is widely used in noise-canceling headphones. But noise reduction in space works in a more complicated way than in headphones. When a noise enters a room it is re-reflected by the walls and objects inside. There are no microcontrollers or ready made solutions for that. We found a study of a scientist Woon-Seng Gan of his experiment where he achived the noise reduction of 10 dB:
Design process
We tried to imagine how this device might look if it would bу a consumer product. Do we need to cover the full window aperture? Or could it be a signle device? We came up with the idea with a minimalist black circle shape that hangs on a window.
The research
Participation in the Lexus Award gave us the opportunity to research can we use this technology to attenuate noises coming from an open window? We found a local engineer who joined the project and was able to recreate the experiment and implement a FPGA-based algorithm. We build a scale model to experiment how it works.
First we have to listen to the room and train the algorithm that estimates the propagation of the reflected waves. Then, the microphone on the back of the device captures noise, the algorithm starts to process and the speakers emit anti-noise waves.
But high-frequency noise is difficult to reduce because very low latency is required. The development of the technology is at the cutting edge of science, we plan to continue our research and expand the range of frequencies.
The prototype
We faced a lot of challenges with hiding wires inside the body, stretching and fixing the audio fabric, with heat distrubution etc. It was a great challenge to make all this in very tight deadline of two months. We entered the contest with just an idea and some nice renders.
In the protype we payed special attention to the lights to make the invisible noise pollution visible.
We designed a backlight that reacts to noise levels. When the device is on the noise starts to decrease and the brightness of the light comes down smoothly along with the noise.
We added a display that indicates the noise level in decibels to make people aware of the noise pollution. 10dB is not that much noise reduction but it still can reduce the harm caused by noise.
We continue the project after the Lexus Award. Stay tuned!
