Development of an open source audio processing platform

The Open-Source software movement has demonstrated the value and quality of open-source tools and includes well-established systems such the Android Operating System. This movement is expanding to hardware and when designed properly, open-source hardware combines the user-friendliness and dependability of commercial products with the high performance and flexibility of scientific tools developed by researchers in their own laboratories. In this research, we present a hardware and software platform entirely open-source, designed to spur innovation in sound and speech processing algorithms. The first prototype includes a Teensy 3.6 board which leverages the Arduino development environment while providing powerful computational capabilities. This processor board is paired with custom-designed electronics for audio control, power management and wireless communication. The software base is designed for multiple users: (1) “experts” who optimize new algorithms directly in firmware; and (2) researchers who inter...