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Explorator clapper

The Explorator clapper species (common name Clapper) is an auditory tourist investigating their location's acoustic properties — acting on the same impulse many audio-centric folk experience when walking through a tunnel, cave, or concert hall to clap, slap, or yelp. The work speculates on how a electronic tourist could sonically investigate natural locations.

The portability of Clapper makes it easy to transport to remote locations, quickly set-up, and observe. As an auditory tourist, the Clapper first spends 1 minute listening to the environment to orientate itself sonically. After this period, Clapper will initiate its first "clap". Clapper then listens again. If it hears an echo of its clap, or someone or something else's response to its clap, it will clap again. Just like with the Chirper, when extended quiet periods occur, or when it is dry, hot, and bright Clapper is likely to clap again in an attempt to re-initiate a dialogue with the sonic environment.

Clapper serves as a special use-case for the Explorator framework as, due to complicated circumstances, the artifact needed to be designed, built, and tested within three days to partake in a week-long exhibition trip throughout the American South West. Furthermore, the authors did not have access to a laser cutter at the time and were thus forced to mostly use left-over components from previous projects forcing the application of the frame.

Clapping Mechanism

As the species is intended to produce the electro-mechanical equivalent of a human clap or snap, the actuators need to create sounds with sharp, quick, percussive transients that quickly decay with little sustain and a quick release. To accomplish this, a push-pull solenoid is mounted to the top of the enclosure, positioned just a few millimeters away from a steel container, which is also bolted to the top of the Clapper's enclosure, that the solenoid directly strikes with its plunger. The solenoid and box's direct mounting to the acrylic body provides some amplification of the strikes.

Body and Enclosure

The Chipper and Chirper species proved prohibitively large and heavy for extended hikes to remote locations. Their exhibition was thus limited to locations within a few hundred meters of a road. Given the singular actuator configuration and lack of an external eye-stock, the enclosure design is simplified and reduced in size. As the primary contributor to weight and size for the electronics enclosure is the lead-acid battery, the Clapper replaces the heavy lead-acid cell with three lighter lithium-ion batteries. Furthermore, the number of internal and external fasteners utilized in the Clapper design is drastically reduced, which simplified the assembly and troubleshooting process while also contributing to reduced weight and size.

The eye-stock PCB is mounted to the bottom of the enclosure, so the microphone and lux sensors are directly exposed to the environment through the enclosure's bottom port — providing better audio quality than the Chipper and Chirper units, at the cost of environmental vulnerability. The enclosure's top and bottom are attached to the center tube via five M5 bolts evenly distributed around the enclosure's parameter providing a weather-resistant pressure seal aided by rubber o-rings between the acrylic tube and the two end-caps.