Hacked Hearing Aids Allow Owner to Hear WiFi Signals
Ever wondered what a WiFi signal sounds like? Probably not, right? But one man has a pretty good idea of what it sounds like thanks to his iPHone compatible Starkey Halo hearing aids.
Mark Swain writes for the New Scientist and he along with artist Daniel Jones wanted to do a project called Phantom Terrains. The aim of the project was to use Swain’s hearing aids to listen to the unseen and probably, for most people, the unknown sounds of WiFi signals.
The pair would essentially take a device, Swain’s hearing aids, used to improve hearing or compensate for a deficit and use them to hear what none of the rest of us can hear.
How could they do this is surely the next question?
The pair hacked Swain’s Bluetooth connected hearing aids using an iPhone, which acted as a conduit for the WiFi signals that will be translated into ambient sounds.
According to the duo’s website, “The project challenges the notion of assistive hearing technology as a prosthetic, re-imagining it as an enhancement that can surpass the ability of normal human hearing.”
When asked why he wanted to hear WiFi network signals Daniel Jones commented, “mostly because they’re such a ubiquitous part of our cultural landscape, pervading pretty much every square foot of the urban environment. Yet they are something that we only become aware of the moment we want to get online.”
Hear what Mark Swain’s and Daniel Jones’ Phantom Terrains WiFi project sounds like
