Max Jacoby
Max is an engineering oriented designer, maker and problem solver. Maintaining both a creative eye for detail and technical sympathy when creating, he conjures functional yet elegant solutions to problems.
Max is an engineering oriented designer, maker and problem solver. Maintaining both a creative eye for detail and technical sympathy when creating, he conjures functional yet elegant solutions to problems.
The problem being solved: large sound systems have the power to blow themselves up.
The EM1 is designed to retrofit to large, high power speaker systems (think festival scale) and measure their vital signs. Power draw, cone excursion and voice coil temperature are captured by a battery powered sensor and wirelessly transmitted to a base station, which monitors, records and processes the data. Should any of these vitals exceed the limit set by the user, the system automatically reduces the volume of the system to protect the speakers from damage by integrating seamlessly into existing limiting and compression systems using the sidechain input.
Not only does the system protect against costly damage to equipment, but it protects and enhances the audience’s listening experience. As the mechanical components of the speaker vary over the course of a concert, so does the volume level. This variance in volume helps fight listening fatigue, maintaining sonic impact throughout the show.
A functional prototype was the main goal of this project. Using a Raspberry Pi and Arduino powered base station, a set of OLED displays present the vital signs to the user. These can also be viewed via a website, accessible from any device on the network. MQTT (an IoT communication protocol) ensures quick, parallel and plentiful data streams which give real time updates.
