ultramic

Simple, dependency-light continuous recording library for Dodotronic Ultramic384k_evo USB microphone; install with pip, works anywhere.

Built on sounddevice (PortAudio), so it runs the same way on Linux, macOS, and Windows — no platform-specific audio backend required.

Features

• Automatic device detection by name (no hardcoded device indices)
• Waits for USB enumeration with a configurable timeout
• Verifies the device supports the target sample rate before recording
• Continuous recording with automatic file rotation (new .wav every N seconds)
• Simple CLI entry point, plus a Python API for use in your own scripts
• Zero required dependencies beyond sounddevice, soundfile, and numpy

Installation

pip install ultramic

For local development:

git clone git@github.com:jgers32/ultramic.git
cd ultramic
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev,viz]"

Quickstart (CLI)

ultramic --audio-dir ./audio --file-duration 600

This will:

1. Wait for a device with "UltraMic" in its name to enumerate (default timeout: 30s)
2. Verify it supports 384kHz recording
3. Record continuously, rotating to a new timestamped .wav file every 600 seconds
4. Log status and errors to ./errors/

Run ultramic --help for all options.

Quickstart (Python API)

from pathlib import Path
from ultramic import wait_for_device, verify_sample_rate, record_continuous

device = wait_for_device(timeout=30)

if not verify_sample_rate(device, sample_rate=384000):
    raise RuntimeError("Device doesn't support 384kHz")

record_continuous(device, output_dir=Path("./audio"), file_duration_sec=600)

See examples/ for more:

• examples/list_devices.py — list all available input devices and their names
• examples/basic_record.py — minimal find-device-and-record example
• examples/timed_recording.py — record for a fixed total duration and stop automatically

Visualizing a recording

pip install "ultramic[viz]"
ultramic-viz path/to/recording.wav

Saves a combined figure to ./plots/<filename>.png (use --plots-dir to change the output location).

Testing

pytest              # unit tests only — no hardware required, safe for CI
pytest -m hardware   # hardware-dependent tests — requires a real UltraMic attached
pytest -v            # verbose output

tests/test_device.py and tests/test_recorder.py mock the audio backend and test pure logic (device matching, timeout handling, sample-rate checks) — these run anywhere, with no hardware needed.

tests/test_hardware.py exercises the real device: finding it, verifying its sample rate, and recording actual audio. These are marker-gated and skipped by default since they require physical hardware.

Platform notes

• WSL: the UltraMic must be passed through to WSL with usbipd bind / usbipd attach before it will be visible to ultramic. Without this step, wait_for_device will time out as if no device were connected.
• Sample rate: UltraMic devices default to 384kHz, well above what most audio tooling assumes (16–48kHz). If you extend the visualization or add feature extraction, double-check that any library defaults (FFT window size, mel filter count, etc.) are adjusted for this — see src/ultramic/viz.py for an example of tuning n_fft and fmax for high sample rates.

Coming Soon!

• Gain switch verification: utility to check/report the state of the Ultramic gain (adjustable via the slider on the side) Additional ideas? Please open an issue on Github

License

MIT — see LICENSE.