Ear-mountable listening device having a microphone array disposed around a circuit board
AssigneeIyo Inc.
InventorsSimon Carlile, Jason Rugolo
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ear-mountable listening device includes an array of microphones physically arranged into a ring pattern to capture sounds from an environment and output first audio signals that are representative of the sounds captured by the microphones. A speaker is arranged to emit audio into an ear in response to a second audio signal. Electronics are coupled to the array of microphones and the speaker and configured to capture the sounds with the array of microphones to generate the first audio signals and generate the second audio signal that drives the speaker based upon one or more of the first audio signals.
Claims21
An ear-mountable listening device, comprising:
- a circuit board;
- an array of microphones physically arranged to encircle the circuit board to capture sounds from an environment, wherein each of the microphones of the array of microphones is configured to output one of a plurality of first audio signals that is representative of the sounds captured by a respective one of the microphones, wherein each of the microphones of the array of microphones is disposed on a corresponding one of a plurality of individual microphone substrates and the individual microphone substrates are linked to the circuit board;
- a speaker arranged to emit audio into an ear in response to a second audio signal;
- and
- electronics disposed on the circuit board and coupled to the array of microphones and the speaker, the electronics including logic that when executed by the electronics causes the ear-mountable listening device to perform operations comprising:
- capturing the sounds with the array of microphones to generate the first audio signals;
- and
- generating the second audio signal that drives the speaker based upon one or more of the first audio signals.
A modular ear-mountable listening system, comprising:
- an acoustic package including a speaker arranged to emit audio into an ear when the modular ear-mountable listening system is worn in the ear;
- and
- an electronics package that removably couples to the acoustic package, the electronics package including:
- a circuit board;
- an array of microphones physically arranged to encircle the circuit board to capture sounds from an environment, wherein each of the microphones of the array of microphones is disposed on a corresponding one of a plurality of individual microphone substrates and the individual microphone substrates are linked to the circuit board;
- and
- electronics disposed on the circuit board and coupled to the array of microphones and the speaker, the electronics configured to receive first audio signals from the array of microphones and generate a second audio signal based upon one or more of the first audio signals for driving the speaker.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.