I’m currently building out an outdoor monitoring project using the WisBlock ecosystem and need to capture environmental audio, but I’m running into an acoustics issue.
Among other components, my current tech stack inside the unit includes:
RAK18030 PDM microphone
Unify IP67 Enclosure with the integrated solar panel.
Because the Unify Enclosure is so well-sealed against the elements, the outside sound is heavily muffled and the internal RAK18030 microphone struggles to pick up clear audio.
Does anyone have experience or best practices for allowing external audio to be heard by internal microphones without compromising the IP67 rating?
Any advice or examples of how you’ve solved this in your own outdoor deployments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
In order to allow the audio into the case you need to drill a hole in the case and mount the microphone in/over this hole. Then, in order to keep the IP67 rating you will need a membrane that passes the audio and keeps the water out.
If you didn’t need the solar panel the obvious solution would be to use the Unify enclosure that is designed to accept a microphone (it has the hole, membrane and gaskets).
In the image below there is a membrane hidden below the gasket with the round hole in it.
Thank you for your response! Drilling a hole and attaching a Gore-Tex membrane appears to have worked quite well at allowing sound to come in while keeping the water out. We’ve secured funding for an initial run of about 12 units for pilot testing but depending on the outcome of those tests we may be looking to scale up production thereafter. For now while we’re in development drilling the holes manually is feasible but I am afraid it may become less so as we scale.
