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Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

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Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#31

Post by monk_e_boy »

lb1lf wrote: post #11

Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? Would be great fun tracking down the source of the problem (if it was my car; probably less so if I was in the house...) There's a lot of options to try to isolate the problem, just thinking out loud here - a) Back into the driveway returning from work. See if alarm goes off. Next morning, see if alarm goes off as you drive out. b) Remove fuse for reverse…

Time for my story.

I was a noobie computer programmer in my first job. After being there for a few months my mouse started to have issues. It stuttered and refused to move correctly.

So I'd take the little grey ball out and clean it and it'd be OK again. But the next day it'd do it again.

So I ended up with the cleanest fucking mouse on planet earth. Yet every so often it'd stop working... on parts of the screen. Other parts it'd work. I ended up using the keyboard a lot.

The mouse would work fine all day some days. Some days it would work fine until about 2PM then it may or may not work.

Eventually I figured out that when the sun shone through the window it created a beam across my mouse mat. When the mouse was moved into the beam it would stop working. So I took it to bits and discovered that the ball would roll a little disc, that disc had little holes in it, there was also an LED and a photodetector. So the mouse was counting the blips in light to determine the movement in the mouse. I guess the cheap plastic was allowing the bright sunlight to bleed through the case causing the photodetctor to go bonkers.

A secondary thing about that cheap as shit PC was you could hear the video card render the screen. It'd buzz when the screen was mostly blue, when it was white it would be silent.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#32

Post by Klathmon »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #29
mixedCase wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not him but I'd bet 5 bucks it was a smoke alarm with depleted batteries.

I'll add a related real life debugging tip I've seen play out at least twice in the real world: If you can't get an alarm to shut-off or stop beeping, no matter what you try, then give serious thought to the possibility that there's a second alarm nearby which is the source of the noise.

About a year after I moved into my previous house, we heard that familiar chirping sound.

After 3 goddamn hours of searching, and having run to the store to buy 9-volts and replaced every goddamn battery in the house, we found a carbon monoxide alarm thrown INSIDE the return air duct of the HVAC unit...

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#33

Post by tfha »

Namrog84 wrote: post #18
lb1lf wrote: post #11

Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? Would be great fun tracking down the source of the problem (if it was my car; probably less so if I was in the house...) There's a lot of options to try to isolate the problem, just thinking out loud here - a) Back into the driveway returning from work. See if alarm goes off. Next morning, see if alarm goes off as you drive out. b) Remove fuse for reverse…

> Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? I love reading about interesting problems and creative ways to solve them. I used to wish for the same. But then I was given a super annoying one. In my apartment I heard this beep about once every 90 seconds or so. I tried ignoring it for a while hoping it'd go away. And just so at the right frequency and infrequent enough Impossible to determine direct…

We had a fire alarm going off due to low battery once. We searched the house for 3 hours trying to find it. Gave up, slept through the beeping.

Next day, enraged, we tried again. Eventually we found it in the bathroom trash can.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#34

Post by verelo »

Namrog84 wrote: post #18
lb1lf wrote: post #11

Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? Would be great fun tracking down the source of the problem (if it was my car; probably less so if I was in the house...) There's a lot of options to try to isolate the problem, just thinking out loud here - a) Back into the driveway returning from work. See if alarm goes off. Next morning, see if alarm goes off as you drive out. b) Remove fuse for reverse…

> Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? I love reading about interesting problems and creative ways to solve them. I used to wish for the same. But then I was given a super annoying one. In my apartment I heard this beep about once every 90 seconds or so. I tried ignoring it for a while hoping it'd go away. And just so at the right frequency and infrequent enough Impossible to determine direct…

Had a near identical issue 3 years back in my apartment! After tracking the source (ear on walls, floor and just figuring out where it was) i ended up discovering it was an alarm in the mechanical room below my apartment. There was a crack in the heat exchanger and it was a CO alarm, the disturbing part (lost sleep aside) was that my complaint about the sound is what alerted the building to the issue, and worse yet, their solution was to consider it a false alarm as they couldn’t see anything wrong and air the room into the hallway to stop the sensor (worked for around 30 mins until in unit alarms started going off too).

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#35

Post by bigiain »

mikestew wrote: post #30
macns wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

f) Try putting car in reverse with the engine off [as someone else already said]

I’d be super surprised if that turned up anything. For one thing, okay, we did that and the alarm didn’t go off. What did we eliminate? Alternatively, if the alarm did go off, this ex-mechanic would be at a loss as to how a car with no powered systems could do that. At that point my suggestion is to call a priest.

Theres a small but non zero chance it's something to do with ultrasonic backup sensors - so I'd try this with everything powered up but without the engine running, mostly because it's a super easy test rather than any real expectation that it'd be the problem.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#36

Post by valine »

eco wrote: post #8

My guess is that the backup camera has an IR light to assist with nightvision. Some security cameras support triggering alerts if they get too much IR light because blasting them with an IR floodlight is a common way to blind a security camera.

Maybe its a backup sensor? The sensors on newer cars make radar detectors go nuts. It’s hard to say without knowing anything about the neighbors security system.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#37

Post by pbhjpbhj »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #31
lb1lf wrote: post #11

Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? Would be great fun tracking down the source of the problem (if it was my car; probably less so if I was in the house...) There's a lot of options to try to isolate the problem, just thinking out loud here - a) Back into the driveway returning from work. See if alarm goes off. Next morning, see if alarm goes off as you drive out. b) Remove fuse for reverse…

Time for my story. I was a noobie computer programmer in my first job. After being there for a few months my mouse started to have issues. It stuttered and refused to move correctly. So I'd take the little grey ball out and clean it and it'd be OK again. But the next day it'd do it again. So I ended up with the cleanest fucking mouse on planet earth. Yet every so often it'd stop working... on parts of the screen. Oth…

Ha, my mouse scroll partially stopped - turns out it's a rotary encoder like you describe, some of the gaps get blocked with dust and the mouse stops scrolling, a bit, still scrolls but seems intermittent (like a software issue), was a couple of days before I opened it up as I was looking for a fault in logs and such.

Of course opening a mouse up and not breaking it is quite hard, they're made to break and be replaced. Current bugbear is Logitech keyboard stand pieces that appear only to be there to break and thus require keyboard replacement - again it seems a design with a penny's more of plastic would be almost invincible.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#38

Post by kelukelugames »

lb1lf wrote: post #11

Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? Would be great fun tracking down the source of the problem (if it was my car; probably less so if I was in the house...) There's a lot of options to try to isolate the problem, just thinking out loud here - a) Back into the driveway returning from work. See if alarm goes off. Next morning, see if alarm goes off as you drive out. b) Remove fuse for reverse…

Happened to me once and drove me nuts. And let me to fight with my housemates. Not worth it.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#39

Post by mort96 »

mikestew wrote: post #30
macns wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

f) Try putting car in reverse with the engine off [as someone else already said]

I’d be super surprised if that turned up anything. For one thing, okay, we did that and the alarm didn’t go off. What did we eliminate? Alternatively, if the alarm did go off, this ex-mechanic would be at a loss as to how a car with no powered systems could do that. At that point my suggestion is to call a priest.

Well, putting it in reverse with the engine off but with electronics on would potentially let us rule out anything related to sound from the engine, and would mean it's more likely something related to electromagnetic waves or something else coming from the onboard electronics.

Re: Neighbor's house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse

#40

Post by Namrog84 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #19
Namrog84 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? I love reading about interesting problems and creative ways to solve them. I used to wish for the same. But then I was given a super annoying one. In my apartment I heard this beep about once every 90 seconds or so. I tried ignoring it for a while hoping it'd go away. And just so at the right frequency and infrequent enough Impossible to determine direct…

So what was it?

The others were correct. It was the neighbors low battery smoke alarm.

I had high suspicion that it was that. But not hearing it thru neighbors door. And with how loud it was and the fact I could hear it thru my front door and not theirs. Made the hunt for it so much harder.

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