Home-made Hydrophone Kit

We get many requests from the general public on how to listen to cetacean sounds. This requires a hydrophone, a device made of one or more piezoelectric elements that can cost up to 300 pounds for a professional quality device. As a much cheaper solution for the hobbyist, we have designed a simple-to-build device using very cheap components available from many sources. Headphones / tape recorders / etc. can be connected to the output of the preamplifier circuit in order to hear / record the cetacean whistles.

Construction details are available in  Acrobat format (this link takes you to a site from where a freeware viewer can be downloaded). 

Hydrophone construction Acrobat
Preamplifier design Acrobat

We are unable to provide technical support on these items, but full construction details are included in the documentation.


Copyright © 2000 Loughborough University Underwater Acoustics Research Group
Last modified on 27 May 2004
B.Woodward1@lboro.ac.uk