Hi guys, I would greatly appreciate your help, I have a different background than electronics and programming, so I am completely lost and in desperately need of help, so any little help can save me. I want to do a project to for saving water in the shower to one of my university courses. The idea is to have a motion sensor and a microphone connected to and Arduino Uno, so when the sensor sense movement in the shower (when the person gets in) and when the mic "senses" the shower noise activates a timer. What I want to do next is just give a sound signal when a time is reached. For now I just want to know if the microphone part is possible, I have seen some projects that detects sound, but I don't know if an specific sound like the shower noise can be detected, Also I am not sure which microphone will be best for this, I read and I will probably need and Electrec plus an amplifier, but honestly I don't know this topic, so I am not sure, If there is someone that knows if this is possible and how it can be possible it will be great and as I said lifesaver, thanks a lot and excuse my huge ignorance.

 

but I don't know if an specific sound like the shower noise can be detected,

why don't you just experiment?

The key I think will be what you meant by "specific". The answer ranges from "sure" to "impossible", depending on your answer there.

The simplest solution would be to have a human sound detector: hire a guy standing there and if he hears the right command, he will activate the water.

 

Any of the following could be fitted to the shower head to indicate when it is probably in use:

• flow sensor
• pressure switch
• piezo transducer to "listen" for the flowing water
• temperature sensor
• A pair of probes to detect the presence of water by measuring its resistance

I don't know why you need to know when someone gets in the shower.

 

This sensing idea is rather tricky and not very reliable- how does it differentiate a voice from water flowing?

Maybe with some sophisticated spectral analysis? but that's not easy, nor foolproof.

 

thanks for the replies, what I wanted at the beginning was to detect the sound of the running water, I thought of it that way because I want to know automatically the moment when the person is taking a shower. I thought of the microphone ecause maybe not all the shower heads are suitable to put a sensor, but I have researched it and as you all say my idea may seem too difficult, so I will probably go for another way to detect the running water, Thanks for the advice, I will have to change my concept idea, probably use a pressure switch.