The acoustic camera: Making sound visible

Are you familiar with the thermic camera? They are well-known and even available for your mobile phone. Commonly used to see possible gas leaks, or where the hot and cold air scapes at your house. Well now there is a new type of camera: an acoustic one. The acoustic camara works in a similar way, instead of detecting temperature variations it visualizes sound´s origin and strength.

With the acoustic camera it is possible to see where a certain sound comes from. It allows you to see a sound that possible a human ear could not detect. This camera has over 30 digital microphones located around a conventional optical lens on a pentagonal surface. In this way the microphones capture the sounds of a photographed scene, and dependeing on the intensity of the sound it draws a heat map to visually represent the captured sound. The camara is light and portable.

The heat maps are composed of different colors that represent the intesity of the sound: they range from blue colors that represent weak sounds passing through greens, yellows finishing in reds where the sound is louder.

This camera was developed by Suk-Hyung Bae in South Korea. He obtained the Red Dot award for this invention, one of the most acclaimed prizes in the design world.

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