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For Jasmin Kronewetter, Sonevo started with a problem much closer to home than the world of startups.
Earlier this year, Jasmin was dealing with a difficult neighbourhood noise complaint. The process involved manually keeping noise diaries, listening out for barking and, in some cases, counting individual barks to help document the severity of the problem.
It was a frustrating process. But with a background in UX and software, alongside engineering and spatial sciences, Jasmin decided to build something to help.
“I built a tool to help resolve a difficult neighbourhood noise complaint our local community was dealing with.”
At the time, there was no plan to turn the idea into a business. Jasmin was simply looking for a better way to deal with a problem she was experiencing herself.
But after people started talking to her about their own noise complaints and asking whether they could use the tool too, she began to see that there might be something bigger there.
A few months later, Jasmin came across the City of Perth Plus Eight Pre-Accelerator, a six-week program supporting founders to develop and test their early-stage business ideas, and applied to take Sonevo out of her home office and into the real world.
From a noise complaint to a working prototype
Sonevo is being developed to help local governments investigate noise complaints by turning sound into structured data.
The prototype replaces the manual diary process with an automated way of capturing and organising evidence. Once plugged into power, the device listens for the specific type of noise it has been asked to monitor, such as barking.
It can record when the noise happens, how long it lasts and how often it occurs. That information is then sent to the cloud and visualised through a dashboard.
For an investigating officer, this means being able to see the scale, frequency and patterns of a noise complaint at a glance, rather than piecing information together from handwritten diaries, phone calls and follow-ups.
Machine learning is what allows the technology to focus on the specific sound it has been asked to monitor, rather than simply recording everything around it.
Barking dogs are the initial use case, but the technology is designed to go beyond one type of complaint. The same underlying system can be adapted to different types of environmental noise, with potential applications across areas such as industrial and infrastructure noise, wildlife monitoring and agriculture.
Taking Sonevo out of the home office
When Jasmin joined the City of Perth Plus Eight Pre-Accelerator, Sonevo was somewhere between a working prototype and a potential business.
The original prototype had already been used to measure barking during the noise complaint, but Jasmin was still working out whether the idea was something worth taking further.
That became one of the questions she wanted to explore through Plus Eight.
The program gave her an opportunity to move Sonevo beyond her own experience and start looking more closely at how the technology could work within the organisations that might eventually use it.
During the program, Jasmin has researched how different councils currently investigate noise complaints, refined Sonevo's positioning and continued developing the field-monitoring hardware and software platform.
Her focus has also shifted towards understanding what happens on the other side of a complaint.
“I experienced the noise complaint process first-hand as a resident, but that only gives you one side of the workflow.”
Understanding who receives a complaint, who investigates it, what evidence they need and what would make them trust data produced by a new system has become an important part of developing Sonevo.
The program has encouraged Jasmin to get outside her own experience and speak to people earlier, rather than making assumptions about what councils need.
Building the right thing
One of Jasmin's biggest takeaways from the program has been that building something technically impressive doesn't necessarily mean you've solved the right problem.
“You can build something technically impressive and still solve the wrong part of the problem.”
For Jasmin, the experience has reinforced the importance of understanding the organisation, workflow and people surrounding a problem, not just the technology itself.
Being part of a cohort has also given her the opportunity to compare experiences with other founders, share ideas and keep moving forward while figuring out what comes next.
“It's really good to be part of a cohort to stay focussed and keep the momentum going as opposed to getting stuck figuring everything out on your own.”
What's next for Sonevo?
The immediate focus is on securing one or more council pilot partners and putting Sonevo into real investigations. Jasmin wants to understand what works, what needs to change and how the technology can make difficult investigations easier, faster and more evidence-based.
Longer term, Jasmin sees potential for Sonevo to become a broader environmental acoustic intelligence platform, helping organisations understand what is happening in an environment through sound.
But the starting point is much simpler: finding a better way to understand the noise that is already causing a problem.
“When I started Plus Eight, I thought I had a fairly narrow use case. Now I can see how much bigger the opportunity could become.”
The next chapter for Sonevo is now about putting that idea to the test in the real world.
To learn more about Sonevo you can visit their website here or connect with Jasmin via LinkedIn here.
See Jasmin pitch Sonevo at our upcoming City of Perth Plus Eight Pre-Accelerator Showcase on October 1st. Register here!
The City of Perth Plus Eight Pre-Accelerator is a Spacecubed program delivered by Plus Eight, supported by City of Perth and the Town of Victoria Park.