Muriel
Hearing protection with a formidable grandmother keeping watch.
Two hours in · three-quarters gone
Muriel listens to the level of the room—not the conversation in it—and tells you when loud has lasted too long. She translates decibels into something you can use: how much of today’s safer exposure has gone, and how long the rest will last at this rate. She is not subtle. “Ninety minutes left at this, dear.” The number behind the remark is always there when you want it.
What it does
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Not just loud, but for how long
Muriel shows the level now and, beside it, the part that matters: how quickly this room is spending a day's safer exposure. Eighty-five decibels gives you eight hours. Ninety-four gives you one. She tells you which sort of room you are standing in, and what it is costing.
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The evening in context
Every loud stretch becomes a session with a duration and average level. Days gather into weeks, so one loud Friday can be understood inside the quiet days around it instead of as a number floating on its own.
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A tap on the wrist
The Watch app shows the level and what remains without asking you to pull out a phone. When the budget is nearly gone, it taps your wrist. At a show, that is about the only warning with a chance of getting through.
Process
- Problem
- Noise damage accumulates quietly. Most phone meters answer how loud it is now and stop there, leaving out the more useful half of the question: how long have you been standing in it?
- Current bet
- Treat exposure as a budget being spent, put the reading on the wrist where it can be checked mid-room, and give the warning a voice blunt enough to be acted on.
- Hard problem
- A microphone on a phone in a pocket is not measuring the level at your ear. Fabric, orientation and the phone's own gain control move the reading further than the differences the reading exists to show. Muriel corrects for what it can detect, asks for the phone to be out when a measurement needs to be trusted, and marks a session as estimated when it cannot be.
- Status
- Shipping. Watch app and optional Health export in the current release.