NoixApp vs Noise Tracker Pro

Among the many forms of pollution in urban areas, acoustic pollution is one of the less considered, albeit very important for the public health and welfare. Being less popular it is also less known and accounted for, so that few initiatives exist in this field. These are generally based on systematic surveying practices based on fixed stations only which cannot reconstruct a full picture of the acoustic spaces of the cities. A new perspective is necessary. Noixapp is a crowdsourcing/citizen-science solution developed by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS, to measure acoustic pollution in urban areas that uses inexpensive mobile phone microphones to acquire data on urban background noise and send it to an integration platform that allows to reconstruct a full picture of the acoustic space of an area. The solution is based on a mobile application software where it is possible to record, compute and average Sound Pressure Level values. Georeferenced data are transmitted to OGS facilities where they are anonymized, integrated, validated and mapped on an open-data web based portal. SPL can be calibrated by using external reference instruments.

"Noise Tracker Pro" is a unique sound meter application for mobile phones developed by the noise experts from CSIR - National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, India, to give a more specific product or application through continuous research and development efforts. "Noise Tracker Pro" is a handy, essential gadget, highly reliable App, pre-calibrated measurements, and supports frequency weightings. The "Noise Tracker Pro" App is a real-time noise monitoring application (noise meter, dB meter) dedicated to evaluating noise levels in the surrounding environment as professional sound meter performs. This App will use the phone microphone to measure environmental noise levels dB (decibels) and display noise levels on the mobile screen. This smartphone application is a handy tool for the students, professionals, and the general public to know the extent of noise levels in their surrounding environment. The accuracy level may change with the change in the make and model of the smartphone. Hence it is always recommended to calibrate the application with an already calibrated SPL meter to improve the accuracy of measurement by adjusting the microphone sensitivity Features: 1. Performance best fits with calibrated SPL meter 2. Very efficient saved record data management 3. Indicates decibel by digital gauge 4. Quick response on sound level changes 5. Standard fast time weighting 6. Compare the recorded noise level with popular international reference standards 7. A- Frequency weighting filter 8. Measure Equivalent A-weighted continuous sound level (LAeq), 9. I/3 Octave in graphical and tabular format 10. Display SPL, LAeq, Average , Minimum and Maximum decibel values 11. Measure noise descriptors L 10 , L 50 & L 90 12. Display Elapsed time of decibel 13. Create the geotagged map for the saved history data 14. Handy custom Calibration for high precision and accuracy 15. Data storage in the phone 16. One can share the saved and recorded data across multiple platforms such as Gmail, WhatsApp, etc. Recommendations for the 'best' measurement: 1. The smart microphone should not be kept hidden during measurement. 2. The smartphone should not be in the pocket but should be held on hand while noise measurements. 3. Don’t make a noise on the back of the smartphone while monitoring noise. 4. Keep safe distances from the source during noise monitoring; otherwise, it may harm you. **Notes This tool is not a professional device to measure decibels. Microphones in most Apple devices are aligned to the human voice. The smartphone microphone device limits the maximum values due to which Very loud sounds (over ~90 dB) may not be recognized by most of the devices. So please use it as just auxiliary tools. If you need more accurate dB values, we recommend an actual sound level meter for noise measurements.