alt Hacker NewsAround '05 or so, the house we were staying in started beeping. Smoke alarm sounds, as usual. For almost a day we couldn't find the source. Contacted the owners -- they didn't know it either. They bought the house few years prior, so not much of a help.
Standing in the hallways listening at different angles, as the article says, didn't help. No Fable in '05 either.
So I had to improvise. Got a ~1 meter stick and two headphones (every headphone is a microphone, even if it sucks as a microphone). Plugged them into the stereo mic port, and started recording in Audacity. The phase shift between L and R pointed directly to the source. Took about 4 or 5 beeps to get the sucker.
Turns out, it was hiding above the ceiling tiles in the garage. My wife still tells this story to all her friends as one of my biggest life achievements. Everything I shipped, the companies I founded -- pales in comparison to finding a dead smoke alarm
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> My wife still tells this story to all her friends as one of my biggest life achievements. Everything I shipped, the companies I founded -- pales in comparison to finding a dead smoke alarm
Do you not feel this way about it yourself? I know I would.
Hahaha amazing. Also cool to hear stories about headphones used as mics, I didn't think it would be sensitive enough for that.
Could you elaborate on how you converted the phase shift into a precise direction? Just a linear mapping? Or did you "hone in" by adjusting the stick until the phase shift disappeared, then proceed in that direction?
I have almost the opposite story.
Many many many years ago, I was a wee IT manager. Sort of a weird company, I was too young to be much more than smart kid who can install / fix anything.
Anyways, worked a few years there, made some friends, had one CAD engineer who was an utter jerk. In hindsight, probably a bully, but at the time just a really irritating person.
So that was my first foray into small electronics… worked up a small breadboard with a 555, some source of randomness I don’t remember now, a piezo speaker, and a 9v battery. It would emit a short beep at random intervals between roughly 60 and 240 minutes.
Stashed it above the ceiling tiles in his office on my last day at the company.
> above the ceiling tiles
So I may in the future be the villain in a story like this if I am forgetful when I sell my apartment.
My upstairs neighbor is a moron who has flooded their apartment at least twice, so I have stashed moisture sensors into the access panels in multiple rooms as a sort of early warning system.
omg, I suppose the "old fashioned" way of just finding the period then anticipating it in different spots wasn't enough this time? :)
I brought the carbon monoxide detector downstairs to show my wife after finding it with Claude and she said "you look like a cat that's proudly showing me the mouse that it caught".