The only reason electronics are so cheap is because they are the world governments biggest tool to control us. Think about everything you buy and what it costs. Do you really think it makes sense this earbud is cheaper than a mop
Hi there, electric-electronics engineering student here. Someone didn't figure it out, it's like tons of people found different things and thousands of companies and people did develop it into a better product. It's too much for one to perfectly make a product like this. You have what have been developed before within years and the knowledge gathered from around a hundred of years to put on. Of course it's still impressive to come up with a newer thing but such products don't come to life by someone or just in a few years after all. It's hard work for tons of people. @@someguy4489
@@IndiaNumberOneCoubtry That's the price that digikey sells them. Obviously, digikey purchases then at a lower price since they do have to make a profit after all. My own experience is that the price roughly doubles for every set of hands it passes through, so I'd expect the price digikey pays to be about 22 cents. And I'd seriously doubt that there's three more sets of hands between digikey and the manufacturer in order to get that approximate one cent price point.
you'd be surprised how expensive the infrastructure around making chips like this is just for them to be sold for dirt cheap, especially if you have asian competition. Nobody does it cheaper than china, they can do it because their workforce is nothing but an expendable media to them.
@@TheMusicman-tv8plit’s actually an abbreviation for California Highway Patrol. There’s literally a cop inside every pair. It’s known as the other chip to differentiate it from the TV program of the 70’s
A smart phone is basically a magic device if you really think about it hard enough. Some of the MOST advanced technologies in the world are used to make a smart phone
@@CyclopsOct to me it's impressive that the ingenuity helicopter sent to Mars, which is by itself an incredible feat of engineering, has some of its electronic components come from consumer devices rather than tailor made, multi million dollar electronics. THAT'S the level of our current consumer tech!
@@CyclopsOctThis technology (Speaker & Mic) is about 150 years old, nowadays it´s just smaller, but same princible. Maybe people that don´t know how it works, could think it´s Magic.
It might be me over thinking the whole process but the idea of that working like it does blows my mind. Voice converted to digital then sent through a web of networks just to get reconverted to sound and be the same audio as the original
It's an alarmingly simple process when you know the mechanics of it, but how we got to understand that is the part that impresses me. But, technology has a way of making you forget just what exactly you're dealing with from a basic perspective. Most people probably don't think much of a smartphone, but it's effectively pure rare metals, minerals, and essence of dinosaurs powered by man-made lightning that uses light-speed pulses and audio waves far, far beyond our hearing to allow distant communication and access to all human knowledge in seconds. Imagine explaining this to the richest person on earth 200 years ago. There's no way they could conceive of what you're saying. And, of course, by the ever-increasing speed of advancement, something that will be made 50 years from now is probably impossible for us to currently conceptualize. That's the part that fascinates me.
@@CosmicWaltz7it's always nice to scroll through RU-vid comments and see comments like yours, instead of most of the rubbish that I normally see. It's actually refreshing seeing thoughtful comments.
It all started with a theoretical physicist coming up with a concept then a clever engineer understood it and applied it and bam you get these kinds of amazing technology
@@jackdepalma Not without the help of mathematics. A physicist tries to understand one universe in front of him using an infinite world created by a mathematician.
It's not. It's only up to 22khz (this one, i guess, even lower). It's pretty easy for electronic devices to vibrate and transmit 22.000 times per second. The GHZ range is impressive, tho.
To be a contrarian to the other replies, I agree. The fact that we're able to replicate ears and voices at such a small level is incredible. There's also cameras to replicate eyes and tiny ones are used in medical areas to see inside the digestive system for problems.
@@gumbitoicic9977It's all just math. Sound is a series of waves superimposed over each other to form different pitches and timbres. The ability to produce these sounds is less impressive than the ability to record them IMO. Developing the means to take the analog wave created by fluctuations in an electromagnetic field and alter a physical medium such that its own EM field can be used to reproduce that sound at a later time is absolutely crazy. But that's what cassette tapes do.
Thanks to American tech. Always advancing and forcing countries to compete. South Korea, Japan. We have them a beautiful jump start. Why are are leaders too. China, has good but mostly steals others tech. Why USA tech is already so far ahead- 10/15 years. We are waiting for the rest of world to catch up.
I honestly only got to do that when we had to make a somewhat innovative technological prototype for school. Now I get to appreciate our advancements more because we went from just having chemicals, minerals, rocks, and elements, to creating videos and the internet and touchscreen gadgets. It's amazing, how something that would normally just be something to imagine and dream about is actually possible. There are many things that seem impossible to me even now, like how th is it possible to be able to interact with the contents inside a screen, and the technology behind earphones and planes and cameras and videos. Everything we have now is so amazing. We went from nothing to everything. Imagine, before there were only paintings to keep portraits, and early in the 19th/20th century we were able to capture reality and view it.. and then it evolved to videos, a moving picture that is seamless.. And there's also audio. Before we only just heard, and now we get to capture the voices, the sounds of reality and store it for however long we want to. It's amazing. We have come sooo far. Humans are really amazing.
@@yacinemokhtafi9425 I think it's more impressive that some jokester from almost 2 thousand years ago wrote a fantasy novel about a carpenter from the middle east and his dad who lives in the sky, and then managed to convince the entire world that it was so real to the point were people still to this day believe that sky-daddy exists who just gives random individuals life-threatening diseases and stuff, just cuz he thinks it's funny. Crazy right
When the machines needed to make computer chips like CPUs and GPUs are out of date (can no longer make the micro precision transistors small enough for latest-gen technology), they can still be used to make things like this.
That’s the beauty of manufacturing. The idea, engineering, and the manufacturing setup are the expensive parts. Once you have that set up it’s easy to make on a large scale
@@DigitalDuelistthis type of information need to be prioritize in public education rather than history or math cause no generation knows what milliamperes are
Thanks for that. I was a record company house engineer in the 80s and 90s, so felt I knew quite a bit about how microphones work. I just assumed earbud/phone mics were simple standard piezo-electric jobbies, but it turns out they’re a little more complicated than that, even though they use the capacitive effect. I’m gonna do a bit more searching about this, it seems the tech has moved on since I was working in audio and it still fascinates me.
MEMS technology. I got a pair of Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds which utilize this tech as a speaker to reproduce mids and highs. The sound reproduction is far superior to old school drivers. The music literally comes alive...they're awesome.
Yup. I imagined this one years ago like make a movie or series about a man(a technological scientist from this modern era) then he and his secret laboratory cave was mysteriously been transported to medieval times like the 1500's with him a laptop, a dlsr camer, a highend smartphone and bunch of powerbanks and portable solar panels, etc... then he hooked with some local girl there and showed off his things to her and eventually her family and then the world and he became famous, became a noble and later a king and changed the world forever... I mean there were videos like these on youtube were you can actually see old tribesmen/indegenous people or community in their almost naked outfits in the modern world reacting with awe to advanced techs in this modern era. Even old tribesmen seeing and going and expiriencing the modern cities and the world for the first time that we have(with them being escorted and sponsored ofcourse) It was very interesting what they think the positives and negatives of this era.
@@JamesGannon-iz7yhyes but on the small local scale. Individuals,Private investigators, and local poleleease cannot access those. Ripe for abuse. We already see an epidemic of it in Japan with hidden cameras. It's getting bad in America with air bnb and hotels.
@@jackoverton8343 I found out recently that law enforcement agencies can technically bug your car with GPS trackers, listening devices, and hidden cameras WITHOUT consent. So long as the car is in the street or driveway. I suggest anyone interested to Google it.
@@william254 and there we go.. my last comment was removed. It's legal for law enforcement agencies to bug your car with gps trackers and microphones if it's in your driveway or on the street. Look it up.
It's incredible that, with silicon, we can make MEMS (microelectronic mechanical devices) to do almost any measurement. Accelerometers, gyroscopes, thermometers, microphones, and so on. That gyroscopes, normally, rotating flywheels, can be made from silicon microchips is, to me, truly amazing. Silicon gyroscopes don't rotate but vibrate instead.
Y'know what's funny to think about...miniaturization doesn't just benefit the consumer, it benefits the company as well. Less materials used to manufacture something which means lower cost to them, and lower weight saves on transportation costs, which are a significant fraction of the end user cost for any item.
What an absolutely *AMAZING* time to be alive!!!! Imagine if you could go back in time and show this Micro-Technology to Scientists, Engineers& Inventors from the 1700’s-1800’s. They would Think it was MAGIC!!
And even if you could explain it to them, and they completely understood, they still wouldn’t be able to duplicate it in their lifetimes. It would take generations to reproduce the material and manufacturing technologies behind it.
When I got my first pair of Airpod's Pro I was astonished by the transparency mode, how they had microphones that would allow you to hear your surroundings with perfect clarity. The ability of the tiny bud to create 3d audio with no latency. They even have a mode now where they will turn down your music if they detect that someone is trying to talk to you. Amazing tech.
Regular Airpods don't have this feature, they don't really need it since you can hear around them but because Airpod's Pro create a seal in your ear they use a transparency mode to allow you to hear your surroundings through them. If you have Airpod's Pro then under settings you should see noise control and you can switch between transparency and noise cancellation. @@byu2
Take it like that, if he can see it with an optical microscope then it's not nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is considered to be just below the size that any of these kinds of microscopes can see (usually below 100nm at the very least).
This is far from nanotechnology. The crown jewel of nanotechnology is biology. If we find some alien species with the most advanced nanotechnology possible in this universe, it could not be more advanced than biology.
"Excuse that I have forgotten your brother Paul Denton and the infinite power of nano-augmentation." -Deus Ex Raiden: "Why Won't You Die?!" Senator Armstrong: "Nanomachines, son! They harden in response to physical trauma. You can't hurt me, Jack." -Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Bruce Banner: Where'd that come from?! Tony Stark: It's nanotech. You like it? - Avengers: Infinity War
Interesting video. I remember coming across an old Scientific American from the early 80s that had a cover story about devices like tiny accelerometers that they were expecting to begin building using chip making technology.
@@hebestreitfan6973this type of information need to be prioritize in public education rather than history or math cause no generation knows what milliamperes are even tho it's something that everybody knows a little bit about from every day usage
Yep, cover of my microelectronics circuit books had one. Used as the sensor for airbags as well as determining the direction your phone is. Fun fact, the accelerators in your phone are claimed not to be able to be used as microphones lol.
Yes those are called MEMS devices. Very intricate piece of machinery. They physically move just like this microphone. That's how your phone knows its own orientation and acceleration. These accelerometers are 2mm^2. There's a video on YT detailing this in detail. Impressive feat of engineering.
@@SahilP2648 To me, MEMS gyroscopes are even more amazing that accelerometers. Instead of rotating like regular gyroscopes, they vibrate and sense the coriolis force when they are rotated.
Some phones are already doing with in their stereo speakers where the 2nd "speaker" is actually just an amplified earpiece, or just the big mic at the top of your selfie camera becoming a speaker and vice versa
While I somewhat share the sentiment, for whatever sound these capture to be of any use, some ancillary tech and infrastructure (such as ICs, batteries, storage and/or radios, etc.) are still needed, and while those can also be (and indeed are) miniaturized, they do add up to the cost and the logistics of planting them and making use of them.
@@Mainyehcthis type of information need to be prioritize in public education rather than history or math cause no generation knows what milliamperes are even tho it's something that everybody knows a little bit about from every day usage
Not like everyone walking around with one even bigger in their pocket already that is connected to a battery and the internet 😅 if i say something out loud im thinking of buying you damn sure can bet that it will end up in my ad stream the next day 😅
@@detslutarmedLiterally what I was thinking. They probably just realized the improbable and figured out that hiding the tech wont cut it. Now people will even pay for the tools to spy on them, repair or replace the broken units and buy a fricking upgrade every couple of years or so WITH THEIR OWN MONEY. Humans can be literally hacked with the concepts of property and possessions. You dont need to hide the poison and your tools to spy on somebody. Just start selling those to people and they'll do the rest.
@@detslutarmed here's the funny and creepy thing: it's more likely that those interests were determined not by recording your or your friends' voices, but by using really clever algorithms that do anticipate your wants and needs through other means… Yes, a lot of it comes down to basic triangulation, e.g. if friend x tells you “hey, I watched cool video y/bought product z”, all your social media websites have to do is know where you are, figure out *who* you are with, and start suggesting stuff from *their* history, because it's likely that you share similar interests or will be exposed to theirs. It's creepy to the point of being completely stupid, but hey, they must've figured out that people have a really high tolerance to creepy algorithmic behaviour and that it actually works and translates into engagement/sales/whatever.
it's incredible, and freaky at same time. They can hide mics in pretty much anything now and it would be very hard to find when looking at the PCB real fast. For example, some smart TVs have a mic in them so they can listen to your behaviour in your home to send relevant ads.
that same spying mic is also in your phones, pc, and laptop, your camera, smartwatch, anything digital. Heck, even a simple lighter has enough components to make a microphone
I’m a warehouse order selector. I wear a headset all day and speak to voice mapping software that picks up check digits. I keep seeing new guys get frustrated and start yelling at the microphone. I usually remind them “bro, it’s 2023. Even the crappiest microphone can hear you squeak out a fart from 30 feet away. If anything, you’re too loud.” Then they say it quietly and it works….
Also you can’t turn off a microphone, that membrane vibrates whenever sound hits it, and that information is processed at all times, which is why you get ads about things you talk about.
what @@doomguy974said, and also these mics are honestly pretty bad, search up a review of any Bluetooth earbuds and skip to the mic test and chances are it sounds like they're underwater or smth
Amazing! I had no idea how small microphones had gotten (and that's just a cheap one), and how they worked. Gone are the days of creating a voltage from it.
Crazy how our voice is transferred through these devices and is digital at that point. Just shows how much more connected we are to everything around us that deals with energy and life. 🙏🏼
I remember swapping out a mic from an old hands free kit for my gaming headphones thinking it was tiny, maybe 9mm by 4mm 😂 the technology we can cram in a space the size of our ear hole is stupendous and mind boggling 🤯 and we take it totally for granted
Amazing 😍 Its just like our human ear,... The inner part of cochlea has tectorial membrane which kind of vibrates with the sound frequency... Ultimately creating motion in the hairs of organ of corti... ❤❤
That's actually scary how this can be put anywhere and pick up conversations and other sensitive material all from this little tiny device back in the day they needed a whole recorder set to record sounds and conversations
Fun fact: all microphones are speakers, and all speakers are microphones, IIRC. They work horribly, but if you can push enough energy through the membrane of a speaker, its movement will apply signal to the wires, just like a microphone.
You're remembering incorrectly. Microphones and speakers are functionally the opposite. Speakers tranduce electricity into sound, while microphones tranduce sound into electricity.
@@ChaceBonanno remember, every action has an opposite reaction. For a speaker, pushing waveforms through a wire causes a magnet attached to a diaphragm to move accordingly. Likewise, if you impart waves upon the diaphragm manually, it will cause the magnet to put waveforms back into the electrical wires. With an amplifier, you *can* read this signal, meaning that speakers are, no matter how horribly functional, in essence, microphones.
Silicon is a semiconductor used in electronics. Silicone is typically a colorless oil or a rubber-like substance. Silicones are used in sealants, adhesives, lubricants, medicine, cooking utensils, etc. Pronunciation can be important.
that is the point...you don't want to be your invention stuck in the shadow, it was good for a short profit but you wanted it to grow and reach everyone so one day people will look into it and your name on it.
It has no value before it's invented, so what's your point? You wanna keep inventions that could shape the future of humanity to yourself? The fact that as it becomes more broadly available it also becomes cheaper has infinitely more value for everyone as a whole than anything else.
Approximately the size of that airpod maybe fatter especially if u want long battery and long audio recorded but yes, not too crazy big cause wouldn’t need Bluetooth modules or speakers or nothing just the small mic, storage, battery and about 4 chips
@@v.j.1017this type of information need to be prioritize in public education rather than history or math cause no generation knows what milliamperes are even tho it's something that everybody knows a little bit about from every day usage
@@NoeOfPortland I appreciate your perspective, @NoeOfPortland. Incorporating practical tech education into the curriculum could indeed be beneficial, as it aligns with the increasingly digital nature of our world. Having a foundational understanding of electronics, such as the implications of milliamperes on battery life, can empower us to make informed decisions about the technology we use daily. As someone delving into computer systems in post secondary, I've seen firsthand the value of such knowledge and believe it complements traditional subjects by providing a more holistic educational experience. There just needs to be more effort from everyone. kids need to study more, teachers need to teach better that way we can use our abilities and our brains to their full extents, I believe we should learn history, math, science and technology and we should also focus on innovation but broad innovation.
There’s actually a smaller mic with about the same battery life, but much smaller than that. Your house could have one and you will never know, no matter how much you clean, you’ll never find it.
Videos like this remind me of how little understanding I have of the little things I take for granted everyday which are made by people way smarter than me
Crazy how someone invented that and everything else around us, material. We don’t give ourselves enough credit as human beings; as many bad things as we did, look at all the great things we also did. Amazing
Its hard to say WE. People who do this kind of shit is very small percentage. Most of the people are casuals who dont really contribute much into advancement
@@PinkeySuavonot neccessairly. For every engineer there has to be 1000 people doing some mundane jobs, like toilet cleaning or mining coal. So unless you are unemployed, its YOU who also helped
@@Christian-lh7uxthis type of information need to be prioritize in public education rather than history or math cause no generation knows what milliamperes are even tho it's something that everybody knows a little bit about from every day usage
@@NoeOfPortland Math is the foundation for everything, even other STEM fields like chemistry and even socioology. History is important for obvious reasons. Don't need to replace them, we could add more core subjects. Problem is it wouldn't help you pack packages in a warehouse, so we only get basic curriculums sadly.
Is the top layer deposited on the stationary layer after the hole are etched? Or is the whole thing manufactured the other way around and glued shut, since then you could do the ion etching for the cavity beneath?
Id say ion boring but it could also be done with a chemical etch or any combination of either process. As we see membrane separations that should give you a hint 😘
Manufactured "bottom up" in layers. They would have used some kind of sacrificial layer to provide the spacing between top/bottom. Probably a layer of silicon dioxide glass. So you etch the first pattern, deposit a layer of glass, deposit the next layers of poly-Si, then finally etch out the sacrificial glass layer (using HF or plasma). Once all that was done, they probably flipped the entire wafer over and did backside DRIE etching.
Because you can have a microphone, but the microphone by itself cannot function without a battery, connectors, storage unit, etc. It starts to add up quickly, just like a car! You can have the engine, but it won't do anything without everything else.
@@hamzasami8362 Bro, check your math. This is a common cheap consumer product. If their goal is to hide it, they can make the other components tiny too. It doesn't amount to much.
@@hamzasami8362 Yes, technically you would probably be able to see it. But once you factor in some basic camouflage, *nobody* is going to find it. That's just a fact of life now. And that's ignoring the obvious point that we *knowingly* surround ourselves with microphone devices connected to the internet. Privacy is dead. I'd love for you to prove me wrong.
@SubjectiveObserver Sure, let's take hidden cameras that are often used by stalkers in hotels. They're often not uploaded directly to the cloud because of the small discrete places they are hidden. They're left there for a long time running only on battery till death, and store their videos on a memory card, probably being a MicroSD being the smallest there is currently for the people's use. Why can't they do otherwise? Wifi requires an antenna plus a bigger onboard motherboard that has to be binded to a server that is either a satelight or the hotels wifi which would be rather difficult to set up, this means the camera is going to be much larger as whole due to the nature of more components, ETC ETC. I'm not going to reply anymore to this dumb argument
I work at a foundry that makes ferrosilicon alloy for use in industrial steel and iron production. The slag from our metal is used to produce stuff like this that is made from silicon.
This is one thing that has always blown my mind. I get recording images, videos, and playing them back. You capture light. But sound? It’s amazing that people used to record sound on WAX of all things. You’d think it’s as simple as capturing vibrations. But so many different sounds can make the same vibration. It’s amazing. Telephones are amazing. Microphones are amazing. We take this technology for granted but just like cameras, this shit is damn near magic.
That’s so cool. Most ppl don’t realize just how amazing these engineering feats are… and even if you do… when you see it like this its an awesome reminder
This is the same type of microphone that’s used in pretty much any phone. On iphones if you remove the simtray you can see one of them, it’s the ambient/noise cancellation mic, but the same model is usef at the bottom for your voice and next to the rear camera.
In your phone. That you carry around. In your tv, home assistant, doorbell, computers, and more. That we've known about forever. This isn't new and scary, and the only one listening to you is an advertising algorithm that deletes the sound after it gets what it wants.
MEMS mics, a miniaturised condenser mic. What'll might blow your minds even more is that either directly below beneath the capacitive diaphragm, or in the shiny blob it connects to, is probably an analogue to digital converter. In either case it is then considered a digital microphone.
