Portable acoustic camera

Aimed at standalone applications, the affordable AcoustiCAM has a multi-microphone array that uses beam forming techniques to overlay an acoustic image onto a visual image that allows the operator to see sound sources. It is suitable for the sound analysis of complex objects and often reveals issues where some conventional measurement methods using single microphones have difficulty.

Because of its high performance, simple operation and cost-effectiveness, the compact AC100 is suitable for a range of applications in research and production, including localisation and separation of sound sources to reduce noise emitted by vehicles, machinery, household appliances and electric tools. 

It can also be used for source analysis for acoustic design of wind tunnel models, acoustic vehicle tests, quality assurance, predictive machine maintenance and acoustic optimisation of product.

Due to its state-of-the-art microphones in MEMS technology with integrated AD converters and 51.2kHz sampling rate, together with integrated measurement data processing electronics in the latest DSP technology, the AC100 is affordable for a wide range of users.

The complete integration in the array with only one USB interface for data and power supply, allows for convenient mobile use with any windows PC.

The AC100 is a compact and easy to use acoustic camera for standalone applications. Users just connect the USB cable, install and start the BeamformX software to make measurements and visualisations simply and rapidly.

It is supplied either as pure hardware and Windows driver for custom development or bundled with the BeamformX application software from OptiNav. BeamformX uses an advanced new robust functional beamforming algorithm. 

AcSoft Sound & Vibration says that compared to conventional beam forming methods, it works faster, has a higher dynamic range and can resolve more details spatially and temporarily. The stored raw data can also be used in post processing with the SAMURAI software from SINUS Messtechnik.

The AcoustiCAM AF 7001 beam forming software ensures precise localisation and separation of sound sources. Any sound situation can be measured with a single measurement along any scanning surface as a coloured, two-dimensional absolute sound pressure distribution.

For the visualisation of the sound situation, the localisation result can be stored and displayed with an overlaid photograph of the object to be examined.

In addition to the AC100 acoustic camera, AcSoft is offering the Tornado multi-channel system for both stationary and mobile applications. This is a useful platform for data acquisition with conventional microphone arrays and for the beamforming calculation with its high performance PC.  

A number of different array geometries with detachable ¼in ICP microphones optimised for various applications are available. Each set of 16 microphone signals is connected to the inputs of the Tornado system securely and quickly by means of highly flexible multi-core cables with MDR connectors. This solution also allows use with customer-specific arrays.

The fan-less design and three-way power supply with AC, DC and battery are key features. Up to four Apollo PCI Express cards with 64 channels in total can be installed. In addition, 8 slow channels are available.