Swear Bleep Detecting Eyebrows

Swear on broadcast television and they’re going to bleep out the audio to protect the sensibilities of the general public. Swear bleeps are fairly standardised at 1kHz, or so [mechatronicsguy] tells us. You learn something new every day.

OK, it’s not as though there’s an ISO document somewhere detailing the exact tone to use when someone says a naughty word on camera, it is far more likely that a 1kHz tone is the most likely frequency to be at hand in a studio. It’s so ubiquitous that even audio engineers with nowhere near perfect pitch can identify it, and one to which an acquaintance of ours swears years of exposure have given his ears a selective notch filter.

Armed with this information, [mechatronicsguy] created a fun project. As a fan of the [electroBOOM] Youtube channel he made a set of LED eyebrows for a picture of his bleep-prone hero, and using a Teensy with its audio and FFT libraries he made them light up whenever a 1kHz tone is detected. It’s not the most amazing of hacks, but if you find yourself in need of a smile on a chilly November morning then maybe it’ll have the same effect on you as it did with us. He’s posted a quick video of the ‘brows in action which we’ve embedded below the break.

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