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Electronics  ·  2026·05·18

Acoustic Angle-of-Arrival Sensor


AbstractTwo microphones a known distance apart hear the same sound a fraction of a millisecond apart. That delay encodes the bearing of the source. A custom STM32F405 board measures it with simultaneous dual-ADC sampling and recovers direction by cross-correlation.

[ FIGURE 1 — HERO PHOTO ]
drop a board / object shot in here
Figure 1.— Acoustic Angle-of-Arrival Sensor.

Measuring the delay precisely enough is the whole project. It means sampling both microphones at the same instant — not nearly the same instant — which on the STM32F4 means driving two ADCs in simultaneous dual mode off a single trigger, then running a cross-correlation in firmware fast enough to be useful.

Bring-up was where the datasheet stopped being a suggestion: a floating VDD pin the schematic implied was internal, and an I²C bus jammed by a known F4 silicon erratum around the ACK bit. The kind of bugs that do not exist until the hardware is real, and are then the only thing that exists.

Specification

MCUSTM32F405RGT6 · Cortex-M4F · 168 MHz
AcquisitionDual ADC, simultaneous mode, single trigger
Microphones2 × MEMS analog, fixed baseline
MethodCross-correlation → TDOA → bearing
InterfaceI²C slave (custom firmware)
FabJLCPCB · 4-layer
StatusWorking
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