Railroad crossing warning system for enhanced route planning based on spectrogram analysis

A system for reducing vehicle traffic delays at railroad crossings, comprising:

• a computer;
• and
• an application on the computer, wherein the application is configured to:
• process a series of sounds received by a microphone proximate the computer,
• perform Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis on data associated with the series of sounds,
• create and analyze, a spectrogram based on the data, and
• instruct a server, via a cellular module and based on the analysis, to transmit a broadcast.

A method of reducing vehicle traffic delays at railroad crossings, comprising:

• a computer equipped with a communication module receiving from a proximate microphone a plurality of electronic signals representing ambient sounds captured by the microphone;
• the computer, based on performance of a fast Fourier transform on data associated with the captured sounds, creating a spectrogram representing the data;
• and
• the computer, based on analysis of the spectrogram, transmitting via the communication module a first message to a backend server.

An apparatus for detection of trains at railroad crossings, comprising:

• a field-deployed detection and reporting device comprising:
• a microphone;
• a communication module;
• a microprocessor;
• and
• an application executable on the microprocessor
• wherein the device is configured to
• receive a series of ambient sounds captured by the microphone,
• perform fast Fourier transformation on data associated with each sound of the series of sounds,
• generate a spectrogram based on the output of the performed fast Fourier transformation of each sound of the series of sounds,
• analyze the spectrogram, and
• transmit, based on the analysis of the spectrogram, a first message via the communication module.