This Android feature can detect what goes bump in the night

Google’s new Sound Notifications feature aims to alert Android users with hearing difficulties about important sounds around the house. — Google

Google has rolled out a new feature to alert those who are hard of hearing – or even heavy sleepers – if something made a noise in or around the house that they should know about.

The Sound Notifications feature for Android can identify 10 common household sounds – from dogs barking to water dripping – and send an alert to the user’s phone or smartwatch.

Google Artificial Intelligence product manager Sagar Savla explained that to aid those with hearing disabilities, the feature draws their attention to noises using other senses, like touch (via phone vibrations) or sight (a flashing camera light).

It will also send a push notification to the user’s device, with a description of what kind of sound it identified and when it heard the noise.

“That way you can continue to get alerts about critical sounds even when you are asleep, a concern shared by many in the deaf and hard of hearing community,” he said on the company blog.

He said these noises were usually meant to grab people’s attention, but don’t work if the user has hearing loss or was wearing earplugs or headphones.

Savla explained that the feature was developed using machine learning and could identify 10 sounds including smoke and fire alarms, sirens, shouting, baby sounds, doorbell ringing, knocking, dogs barking, appliances beeping, water running and landline phones ringing.

It leveraged off the Live Transcribe app, which was able to identify and transcribe 30 types of background sounds when converting conversations to real time captions.

Savla said Sound Notifications also had a timeline view, so users could scroll through a snapshot of detected sounds from the past few hours.

“It often helps to know more about the preceding events that might have caused that disturbance. This shows when and how long the sound occurred to get a better sense of the sound’s importance. So if the dog has been barking because of a siren heard before that for 10 minutes, you can see that,” he said.

Users need to download Live Transcribe app to access the feature, which can be turned on in the Setting Accessibility menu.

For better results, users are recommended to place the phone in the centre of the room, with nothing in its way, and to turn down ambient sounds like a TV.

Google assures that the feature will not send audio or background conversations to the company without user consent.