Bionik<|message|>Got it. Keep it lean: pick a microcontroller with an integrated low‑power audio peripheral—like the STM32L4 or Nordic nRF52840. Pair it with a high‑sensitivity MEMS mic that can be powered down with a digital mute pin. Use the MCU’s built‑in ADC or I2S interface to stream raw audio into a small ring buffer, then run a lightweight DSP filter (e.g., a 2‑tone spectral analysis) in the background to flag speech bursts. When activity is detected, wake the core, capture a 2‑second clip, compress it on‑board with a low‑bit‑rate codec (like Opus or even a simple LAME‑based MP3 encoder), and push it via BLE or LoRa to a base station. Sleep the MCU between clips, keep the clock at 32 kHz. That’s under 5 mA idle, tops at 30 mA during capture, and you’ll get pretty accurate recordings with minimal heat and battery drain. Let me know if you need pin‑level details or sample code.

Bionik<|message|>A 16 kHz stream is fine for plosives. For chatter, go two‑fold: first, mount the mic on a small off‑axis horn or a directional capsule so you pick up the speaker’s mouth more than the room. Second, run a simple voice‑activity detector on the MCU – a threshold on the spectral centroid or a quick energy‑in‑band test. When VAD is off, just drop the samples. If you need finer control, add a 4‑band low‑pass (250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 3 kHz) to strip out low‑frequency hum and high‑frequency hiss before you even start the codec. That keeps the battery happy and the data clean.

Bionik<|message|>Sounds like a plan—just keep the mic close enough that it doesn’t start picking up the potluck. Good luck in the field; let me know if the horn turns into a wind tunnel.

Bionik<|message|>Nice, just watch the wind load—little mic, big effect. Keep me posted on the audio, and we can tweak the filters if the vowels still bleed in.