First year in university with COVID wasn’t fun, social interactions were limited, so I started inviting my friends over. Soon it became a recurrent thing and noise complaints from neighbors flew in. A solution was needed, and the Shusher project was born.

In collaboration with some classmates we developed a Smart Ash Tray equipped with microphones. It measures noise levels and then glows red, orange or green according to how loud the ambient sound is. And after developing it and putting it to the test, noise complaints stopped altogether.

Initially we wanted to make a fixed piece, but after analysis we realized that the center of the party is where people smoke, and if it moved around, ash trays follow trough. Therefore by making the Shusher an ash tray it would get accurate measurements and would always be at the epicenter of it all.

Ash trays are dirty, so we decided to make it dishwasher safe by creating two separate parts, that then screw together. The top part submergible, and the second part with all the electronic components.

We used arduino technology because of its small size, huge availability of comatible components and big fan base.

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