Sound Sleuth Hydrophone Build

Interesting sound, a great idea for sound design. Cool development!

Yay! I've been waiting for this one!

After seining for what kind of ASMR content binaural microphones get used mainly i’m interested to see where dish microphones end up. :P

surely this will make it in someone's "oddly satisfying video" compilation

"Do not embed these without testing!" <-- Sounds like the voice of experience right there!

That sounded NICE!

Very cool.

Thanks for video. Do you think it will work without preamp board but directly in Triton audio Piezo ? I’m using my barcus berry with these pre and it sounds great

Question. And here in the XLR connector you did not solder two 22nF capacitors are for RF/EMI

What's the frequency response like?

Amazing concept, I had never heard of such thing as a hydrophone before!

This doesn't seem like it'd be able to distinguish direction of sound though? Only distance? Could two of them be paired up facing different directions to production directional information?

I wish I knew this 3 years ago :(

did you have to make a creepy intro..?

Cool!
I'd love to build some of these to place in our hotspring-fed ponds, to hear the bubbles from the gasses being released from the Earth.

Thanks ! Very interesting.
Hackaday brought me here

great job / work, very cool.

I feel like I should mention that the air bubbles slightly effect performance, the air voids change the acoustic impedance of the potting material by causing discontinues in the path the waves make thru the water. This is generally only an issues if the size of the bubbles are close to the wavelength of the wave in the medium. Since you are using audio band, probably doesn't matter as you say.

Possibly another thing to mention is that the potting you want to use should have a similar acoustic impedance to water, so that most of the received energy passes thru the acoustic interface.

Very nice design. One question: it looks like your phantom blocking capacitors are 10-v rated parts. Are those adequate to withstand 48V phantom power, or is your external recorder/preamp supplying a lower phantom voltage?

Do you have a link or part number to the zener diode you used? I didnt see it in the BOM. Thanks. Got my boards in and my piezo and am excited to do some water testing as well as hook it up to my DSA and peek at the phase response and see how linear it is

thank you for sharing this. if you ever decide to sell your pre made diy hydrophones, i would be happy to order a couple

Bark sent me over! 😃 This is pretty cool. I drive by a river up in Wyoming that has rapids that are pretty easy to get to. I think that would be a fun place to test these. Maybe even one on one channel then a mic above water and do some kind of mix with the video of the rapids. Thanks!

Do you have to seal the peices in a bulky fixture like the resin bulb you have? Or could they be sealed inside plasti-dip and left with voids(speaking to the mic specifically)? The mics you are using are very interesting as I have never seen them before.

I hope I am not disturbing you, however due to constraints of time I was hoping to tap into your skills and videographers skills. I caught your video on hydrophones (DIY). While observing the construction techniques I said to myself "woooo, Which of course led me to subscribe and to download your available videos.I myself was in the navy, operations specialist on the coral sea, and while the medium is different it does result in energy being absorbed by a receiving device. I was accepted to Woods hole, but life doesn't always agree with our plans, today.I have sent away for the two shown piezo cylinders, and will shortly order the rest of the device you have shown in the video. I do not have a 3d printer so i'll have to procure that from another source.On the topic of aquatic sounds, recording them is a new avenue for me, but I have downloaded and will read all the literature shown at the sites you listed.
My questions are (great plausible video) the device mentioned (shown) the frequencies it can record, I am looking at the manufacturer's spec's (which currently allude me) can the preamp/ opamp be adjusted to bring the inaudible to an audible range? And if so, have you already done so?In the video where you took the system out for the proverbial spin I did hear some variation in sounds, but i am currently assuming it may have been a simple cavitation from swim fins? Any tidbits would be helpful as I had said I am a little short on time (64.5 years old)thanks for your time Dave J.L

Want to build this, but was wondering if the pcb is still the same, or if you’d recommend a new one bc of the xlr issue.

Hello nice video , i have question this hydrophone can hear on a frequency of 1hz to 16 hz ?

These are really cool I want to make something out of one of these!

Hi, Can you just use a Piezo Pickup for musical instrument and just encase it in resin? Great video !

..amazing video, great project..its a bummer that the piezo pieces are high cost shipping to europe..what are the exact specs for these? maybe I could find smthng here in europe..

Jules, I just want to let you know that you're quite an inspiration, thank you.

These sound great, well worth the $16(!) piezo element. Given that the element end is unshielded, have you encountered any issues with EMI?

Hi where can I buy these components please

❤great play. Spent some time as a sub sailor aboard USS Pintado SSN 672. Since my discharge in ‘82 I been wanting to build a replica complete with sonar. What do you think? From your link I found a crystal with a 2 mm diameter.

This is great I’m on the west coast of Canada have a 40 boat sit up for recording, I’ve ordered the tubes and pre amp, can you suggest a speaker that could be used in the water ?

I love these builds! I'd love to see you take a crack at an DIY RF Bias Shotgun Mic

These sound great. I'm pretty familiar with the JRF and Aquarian Audio H2A hydrophones and your DIY mics sound, dare I say, better (though I'd need to hear more examples to be sure). I watched two of your other videos, the drop rig one and episode 17 (I think) where you're out swimming. The mid and highs sound so good but I was surprised at the absence of low end, especially when there are people swimming with large strokes, or paddling a kayak. There was also a motor boat pass by at some point where I would have expected much more low end. But maybe it's all just a coincidence with these particular examples. Has this been your experience with these hydrophones, the lack of low? If these can capture nice full low frequency content as well, I'm totally sold. The JRF sounds ok with an impedance transformer but are still very mid range forward with a lack of high end. The H2A is a bit better in the mids and lows but really lacks a nice high frequency response. Anyway, great video and great sounding mics. Thanks so much.

Is it can be used as a sonar?

That music made this instruction much harder to pay attention to it was very loud and distracting - please don't do that in future.

This is excellent work. Well done.

Is there a reason you used cylinder piezos instead of a disk?

The cylinders are similar to what the Navy uses in towed arrays, and there it kind of makes sense, but is there a specific reason for cylinders in your single phone applications?

I have a question: The piezo element you chose seems to pickup all frecuency range but specially the higher ranges and ultrasounds, hydrophones like the Aquarian H2D have lower frecuency response and give a darker/"rumble" sound to the hydrophones, how can I achieve this ? What piezo element would work better for those purposes?

I was going to buy a boat and I promised my children a boat but my wife spent all the money. Children are very disappointed. What do I do now?

Can I use this to detect and track allied shipping?

Just received the Piezo cylinder and the pre-amp pcb. Cable and connector next. I'll airspace the element center as suggested and add a ground stub. I'm landlocked here, but one of things I'll be testing is to lower it into a dug well and see and many seismic signals might be coupled in from the surrounding ground. Another use will be as a Contact Mic for various things. Anything else I need to know before the actual build?

Do you know what the power draw on these is?

I whould 3D printed a spacer/spine to hold two pzt tubes wired as a balanced input, 3D printed the molds in PLA.
Then I whould have applied a heatshrink tube over the spine with the tubes on, and a shielded heatshrink tube on top with a bare wire between the two heatshrink tubes.
Shielded heatshrink tubes has a electric conductive inner surface.
Do a overcast with low viscousity epoxy of the whole ordeal. Of course one needs a suitable buffer/impedance circuit.

Absolutely fascinating video. I wondered if I could encase an old cardioid condenser mic. I don`t use it and thought it might do. Is this possible and effective? It`s an Audio Technica AT2020.

Hi Jules, do you build these for others? I would be interested in a stereo pair for Field Recording.