Have you ever run into a person that talks over everybody or constantly rants? Of course you negotiate and set boundaries but some lack interpersonal skill and interrupt or use annoying tactics.

Fret no more! Shut-Up-O-Matic will keep track of conversation and show visualizations that represent balance of conversation.

What comes to mind is a grid of LEDs that would sit in front of you like a chess board. Like the one to the right which is from an instructable to make an LED grid.

Tracking a Conversation

I was thinking if I could come up with some sort of directional sound sensor and measure volume over time for each side. I think the visualizations will be easy but tracking the balance of a conversation over time might be challenging.

Sound Direction and Arduino

I set up a circuit using two microphones with the idea of seeing if I could detect the direction of sound by difference in level. As it turns out I got the wrong mics. These mics have an analog and digital out but it seems the analog just gives the potentiometer adjustment and the digital seems to read HIGH or LOW at a threshold based on the pot. I guess I need to order good microphones.

Related

http://hacknmod.com/hack/diy-sound-localization-sensor-with-arduino/

http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/sound-localization/

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,2534.0.html

Speech recognition might be fun. Key works could be used to influence outcome:

http://interface.khm.de/index.php/lab/experiments/frequency-measurement-library/

Sound Localization using Arduino

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Audio-Input/

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-microphone-amplifier-breakout/measuring-sound-levels

http://interface.khm.de/index.php/lab/experiments/arduino-realtime-audio-processing/