Listening & Recording Devices

Created: Thu Sep 25 2025

A collection of listening devices to sense and hear nature.

Listening Stick

A low-tech device made out of metal and wood to detect water leaks in pipes. The stick is placed in the ground touching the pipe. Through the vibration, the sound wave travels up the stick to the ear-trumpet. A trained person can identify a hissing sound which indicates a leak. “The material or pipe size does not prevent the listening stick from being able to pinpoint the leak from the surface, but what does affect this is the type of leak, ground backfill material, pressure of the water leaving the pipe, background noise and the ability of the engineer” (Hamilton and Charalambous, 2020, p. 14) (pdf)

Hydrophone

Talked to Pablo, program assistant in Media Design, and he suggested to have cable strain relief. The instructables I'm following has no mechanism in place to absorb shock or to prevent interference with the electronic part. This is important because the hydrophone will be submerged in water which could get stuck in rocks. Pulling it hard can damnage the cable and also loosen the connection to the electronic component. Even though the electronic part will be casted in resin, this cable strain relief will be a preventitive mesure. If there's disconnection between the cable and electronic after the casting, there's no way to save it.

Geophone

Recorder

Mobile device Zoom H1N

Bibliography

HAMILTON, Stuart and CHARALAMBOUS, Bambos, 2020. Leak detection: technology and implementation. Second edition. London, UK : IWA Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78906-085-0.