SENS (Smart Environmental Noise System)

The Smart Environmental Noise System (SENS) is an advanced sensor technology designed for real-time acoustic monitoring, with a focus on urban environments. Built on a Raspberry Pi platform, SENS captures sound continuously and processes it locally using custom-developed software based on small and efficient artificial intelligence algorithms. SENS calculates acoustic parameters, including Sound Pressure Level (SPL), and makes predictions of the perceptual sound attributes of pleasantness and eventfulness (ISO 12913), along with detecting the presence of specific sound sources such as vehicles, birds, and human activity, among others. To safeguard privacy, all processing occurs directly on the device in real-time ensuring that no audio recordings are permanently stored or transferred. Additionally, the system transmits the extracted audio representation through the wireless network to a remote server, made possible using mobile data connectivity. SENS technology represents an innovative step in environmental noise monitoring, offering real-time processing and robust privacy protection. A single SENS device or a network of them could serve as a powerful tool for understanding the acoustic characteristics of soundscapes with efficiency and flexibility.