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The Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) is the largest makerspace at Rice University, providing a space for all students to design and prototype solutions to real-world challenges. To serve this purpose, the OEDK houses a number of power tools and large machinery that produce loud, potentially unsafe noises. While the OEDK has successfully established a culture of safety around eye protection and gloves, it has been unable to establish the same culture of safety around hearing protection, due to the fact that users are unsure of when hearing protection is required.

Our team, Ring the Decibels, aims to solve this problem by designing, building, and implementing an alert system that advises OEDK users to wear appropriate hearing protection at unsafe sound levels.”

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