OpenBinaural 3D microphone design

Low-cost 3D-printable binaural microphone.

Project presented at OSHWDem 2015 (Open Source Hardware Demonstration in A Coruña, Spain) and Maker Faire Bilbao 2015. First featured in Hackaday.

Assembly instructions

Click here for the full assembly instructions

Demo recordings

By Philippe Benaim:
Un tour Montgolfière (link)
Château de Chenonceau Outside (link)
Vacances Aout 2015 (link)
By Carlosgs:
Sea shore in A Coruña, Spain (link)
If you use the mic, please let me know, I'd love to hear about it! :-)

Assembled OpenBinaural microphone:

3D-printable ears

The left and right ears, and the potentiometer knob can be 3D-printed in PLA or ABS. Flexible materials may create more realistic effects!
The support for the ears can be laser-cut out of 3mm plywood (DXF file) or 3D printed (STL file).

Tripod mount detail:

The metal insert can be found in eBay as 1/4" to 3/8" convert screw

Electronics

Note: The amplifier circuit is very outdated and noisy! Instead I recommend connecting the microphone capsules directly to the recorder. See here for an example.

The KiCad sources for the electronics can be found in the Electronics folder.
Here are the schematic and layout.
The Gerber files, B/W layout in PDF, and CNC gcode files can be found here.

Detailed ear canal

Where to buy

I currently have no plans to sell this microphone, it has an open license so anyone can build it or sell it (as long as they provide attribution and publish their modifications as open too).
Please refer to the following links if you just need a binaural microphone that works out of the box:

Acknowledgments

The awesome ear model was designed by Jonathan March:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:499001
For this project, the STL was modified with FreeCAD and Blender
Great inspiration was taken from 3Dio. If you need professional quality & high-performance, check out their Free Space microphones!
The potentiometer knob model is derived from John Ridley's: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/knob-for-potentiometer-parametric
I want to thank Imperial College Advanced Hackspace and Imperial College Robotics Society for providing the infrastructure (tools, 3D printers, laser cutters & material resources) that made this project possible. The community that has grown upon them is just amazing.
Also thanks to Mr Rodrigo García Saura for sourcing the 1/4" to 3/8" convert screw for the tripod mount

Author & license

Author: Carlos Garcia Saura (https://github.com/CarlosGS/)
License: CC-BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Please cite as:

Latex / Bibtex citation:

@misc{garciasaura2015binaural,
  author = {Garcia-Saura, Carlos},
  title = {Open Binaural 3D microphone design},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.5281/ZENODO.10446511},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10446511}
}

APA style citation:

García-Saura, C. (2015). Open Binaural 3D microphone design. GitHub. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10446511

Also check out my previous work "3D Video with Binaural Audio":

García-Saura, C. (2011). Vídeo en 3D con Sonido Binaural. Congreso del XXIV Certamen Jóvenes Investigadores INJUVE, CEULAJ Málaga. INJUVE. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10445722

CarlosGS/OpenBinaural