Nalu Paz

10/19/15
Period 2

Raspberry Pi Application Brief

The programming that we will be doing will allow us to use speech recognition. It will be
able to translate certain words such as on and off into a command that will actually turn the
lights on/off. The first step for this programming will be downloading PyAudio on The Pi.
PyAudio uses a USB microphone to collect the sound. One part of the code records the sound
being put into the microphone and can modify the audio codes. The coding that we will be using
enables Googles speech to text program. Although it is a decent program it still has some
limitations such as, the speech can only be 15 seconds long. this will not affect us though
because our commands will take a maximum of about 3 seconds.
Our coding cannot be used as electrical signals but it can cut off or allow the electricity to
flow. In our case the electricity we flow through the metal pins on the Pi which then attaches to
the GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) cable. The electricity flows through the GPIO then to
the circuit that the LED light is connected to. A circuit is a closed pathway that finishes in the
same place it started. In this project we will have 3 circuits running at the same time. If two or
more LED lights are put in the same circuit they wont light up because the circuit will get cut off.
Therefore each LED will need its own circuit to run on.
The audio device we will be using to send the sound to the Pi is a microphone called a
snowball by the company Blue. This microphone will mechanically connect to the Pi by USB.

This type of microphone is called a condenser microphone. Condenser microphones turn sound
vibrations into voltage energy (audio signal). Inside of the outer shell there is 2 metal plates that
make an electrical current. One of these plates vibrates to the sound waves hitting it and the other
is permanently stationary. An energy source (battery) is then attached to both of these plates
which creates a current in both of the plates. By doing this an electrical field is created between
the two plates. When the one plate vibrates it causes the electrical field to change which creates
your audio signal. Theses signals will be sent to the Pi through the USB cable.
A breadboard is a device that you can test electrical circuits on. Since buying a bulb that
communicates via wifi would be much more expensive and harder to program we will be testing
our lights on a breadboard. After the microphone sends the audio signals to the Pi, the CPU will
allow a current to flow to a certain region on the breadboard. This allows specific slots on the
breadboard to have power, therefore lighting up certain LEDs. Although the breadboard can not
handle over 5V it is still good for testing before making your final product. The breadboard
creates circuit(s) when the LED is put into both a negative and positive slot. Since we will have
multiple LEDs we will have multiple circuits.
The lights that we will be using are LEDs. They may work well for this application but
they do not work the same as traditional lights. LED stands for light emitting diode and contains
a p-n junction. It is called a p-n junction because one part is positive and the other is negative.
The part in the diode that is negative is made up of mostly silicon with a little arsenic or
phosphorus and the Positive part is made up of mainly silicon with a little gallium or boron. It is
done like this because arsenic contains one valence electron, which will be transmitted to the

positive side. Since electricity is attracted to positive substances, the electricity will pass through
the holes and into the rest of the circuit.
A similar application that someone has done was just apply voice recognition to the Pi.
He did this the same way we did by taking a microphone and using that to pick up the sound. He
downloaded PyAudio which is a program that converts sound into coding. He plunged the
microphone into the Pi by USB. He then put certain words into action by putting in a code to test
if it worked so far. In the end the voice commands worked properly with the Pi. He was then able
to use voice command for any aspect you could add to the Pi. Our projects would have been the
same but we specifically chose to control lights while he did not pick a specific topic.

Works Cited
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"Berklee College - Introduction to Music Production - Assignement 1: How Do Microphones Work?" YouTube.
YouTube. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"Google." Google. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"How Light Emitting Diodes Work." HowStuffWorks. 30 Jan. 2002. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"How Semiconductors Work." HowStuffWorks. 24 Apr. 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"Morse Code on an LED." - Physical Computing with Raspberry Pi. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"Tweaking4All.com - Hardware - What Is a Breadboard and How to Use It ..." Tweaking4All.com. 31 Dec. 2013.
Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
"Using a Breadboard." - Physical Computing with Raspberry Pi. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

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