Project Report for Room Noise Level Detector by Kiran Ingale. Introduction.

Need for the project : Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. Jean Arp Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken. Robert Fripp When I was in school, we had an exhibition on the various types of pollution and their effect on our day to day lives. There, I realized that it was noise pollution that we encountered the most in our everyday lives. One of the participants had made a poster with the slogan : The more you make NOISE ,the faster you lose your VOICE. This slogan struck me. Speech is the most fundamental of human abilities. If we lose our ability to speak, how different will we be from animals? Living in a city like Mumbai, we are constantly surrounded by noise. Everywhere. In fact , here's an excerpt of an article published in the Times of India : Recent civic reports on Mumbai's environment show that noise levels in residential areas have steadily increased during the day as well as at night. Silence zones in the city are anything but so. Noise levels in 2011-12 were around 63 decibels (db) by day and 78 db at night, against the permissible limits of 50 db and 40 db respectively. In fact, noise levels in Mumbai's 1112 notified silence zones have steadily increased in the last four years. "There is a complete disregard for the noise quotient in the city. Most people aren't even aware of the silence zones around their area. They are also ignorant of the health hazards due to the constant exposure to loud noise," said Rubina Aslam, an environmentalist. Many travel blogs agree that Mumbai is one the noisiest cities in the world if not the noisiest. Here are some adverse effects of noise pollution :

The above picture shows the effect on human life. Noise pollution also has adverse effects on wildlife. Thus, when we had to make a project in SYJC, I decided to make a project that would be practically useful and beneficial. My project is Room Noise Level Detector. This circuit is intended to signal, through a flashing LED, the exceeding of a fixed threshold in room noise, chosen from three fixed levels, namely 50, 70 & 85 dB. Thus, using this circuit, we can monitor the noise levels around us quite easily.