project · paused · Python
clap-trigger
A small desktop assistant triggered by a double clap — spoken status report and project shortcuts.
Written purely to amuse myself. It listens to the microphone, and when it hears two quick claps it opens my working environment and reads me a short status report out loud.
What it does
- Watches the mic stream for sudden amplitude spikes
- Fires when two spikes land inside a given time window
- Opens project folders and tools
- Reads a short status report via text-to-speech
What I learned
Threshold tuning is the whole problem. A fixed amplitude threshold either triggered on a slamming door or missed real claps. An adaptive threshold tracking a moving average was far more robust.
Keep the timing window tight. Requiring the gap between claps to fall in 150–600 ms cut false positives to almost nothing.
Why it’s paused
It works, but leaving a microphone listening in the background all day is wearing on both battery and peace of mind. I could bind it to a hotkey instead — at which point the whole joke is gone.