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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

#131

Post by Washuu »

mdip wrote: post #102
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…

Off topic to the discussion, but you hit on something that struck a nerve with me so I'm going to go with it . . . Oh good God, this happens to me every time one of my smoke alarm batteries starts to go. I have 6 smoke detectors and an older home where they're not all wired/battery back-up but rather all battery powered. The "chirp at 90 second interval" thing is the worst design in the universe and it bites me every…

The whole house hard wired smoke alarms are just SO FUN when they start to fail. The one that is failing immediately sets all of them off, but only once at 3AM every night for two weeks. So you get woken up by a brief ear piercing alarm from around the whole house and have no idea which one it is.

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

#132

Post by isoprophlex »

mdip wrote: post #102
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…

Off topic to the discussion, but you hit on something that struck a nerve with me so I'm going to go with it . . . Oh good God, this happens to me every time one of my smoke alarm batteries starts to go. I have 6 smoke detectors and an older home where they're not all wired/battery back-up but rather all battery powered. The "chirp at 90 second interval" thing is the worst design in the universe and it bites me every…

Your observation of the unhappy timing is probably related to the temperature. Cold batteries have lower voltage across their terminals, triggering the chirp.

(You can troll people into thinking you have magical powers, rub the batteries of a just-failing calculator/scale/wristwatch in your hands and you'll get another ten minutes of use out of them)

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

#133

Post by TeMPOraL »

lostlogin wrote: post #118
mdip wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic to the discussion, but you hit on something that struck a nerve with me so I'm going to go with it . . . Oh good God, this happens to me every time one of my smoke alarm batteries starts to go. I have 6 smoke detectors and an older home where they're not all wired/battery back-up but rather all battery powered. The "chirp at 90 second interval" thing is the worst design in the universe and it bites me every…

Elsewhere in the thead I was moaning about this design, as multiple times it’s been in flat in our neighbours house and I’ve been checking ours. Can’t they just die quietly? If you aren’t checking them periodically anyway, you don’t know they they work.

They shouldn't, unless you want to risk dying with them :).

That said, everyone should check their alarms at least once. You should be able to find appropriate "testers" to purchase with alarms. I use CO alarms at the place I live in (gas-heated water), and each of them I tested with what I affectionately call "carbon monoxide in a spray can".

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

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

mindcrime wrote: post #106
germinalphrase wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My buddy's dad was an EE and built tiny devices made to create this exact situation. Easily hidable, they emitted a loud beep sound at a varying interval (~40-120 seconds). He called them Annoyers and would leave them behind pictures frames, in plants, etc. after parties.

This seems like a particularly evil variation of that idea: http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=C6...

I think this one is even more evil, because it forces you search in the dark.

This in fact is a very popular around the world electronic kit for beginner hobbyists, because it's trivial to build and has only few components. I remember it from electronics magazines in Poland.

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

#135

Post by sulam »

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…

I might be mildly evil, but I have deliberately caused a situation like this once in my life. I lived in an apartment with someone above and below me. At some point a woman moved in above me and my gf, paying way more than I did (par for the course in SF at the time). She was a super bitchy lawyer, and pretty shortly we started getting complaints that we were making too much noise at night. Keep in mind she was above us, so it wasn’t us walking around. She complained she could hear us talking and typing — but we were both really quiet people, and it’s not like I had a loud keyboard or anything. It was annoying and she wouldn’t stop complaining.

Eventually I decided to move out, for other reasons. My last act after everything was out of the place was to buy a cheap battery powered alarm clock, sat on a high shelf in a bedroom closet in a hard to see spot, programmed to go off at 2am every night for 5 minutes.

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

#136

Post by TeMPOraL »

lostlogin wrote: post #121
dawnerd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they all beep because they want you to replace all the batteries. I had this happen a few months ago except it wasn't a low battery alarm. It kept yelling "FIRE FIRE" but then turning off. Of course FirstAlert apparently doesn't indicate which alarm is causing it. They say the initiating one flashes a different pattern but I didn't find one. Ended up, after getting no sleep at all, replacing all 9 of them w…

This who thread had me feeling twitchy. How did any of these product designs make it to market?

They weren't (probably still aren't) regulated enough.

Manufacturers can get away with it because even if they screw up, an angry customer doesn't really affect their sales in any meaningful way.

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

#137

Post by TeMPOraL »

mindcrime wrote: post #107
jbuzbee wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my odd story. Years ago, my wife and I were sleeping over at my parents house and we were awoken by garbled conversation from the clock radio. I sleepily checked it out and saw that the radio was turned off. Thinking that the on/off switch was broken, I just unplugged it. The garbled conversation continued. At this point I wondered if my parents house was built on top of an ancient burial ground... Talking to…

It seems like a bit of a stretch, but in theory - depending on the details of the radio, and the power being emitted by the neighbor's station - you might be able to get some audio from a "powered off" radio. Maybe it's doing something like what happens when a crystal radio[1] absorbs enough power inductively to generate its audio. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio

I've heard stories of unplugged loudspeakers turning into AM radios with enough power pumped into the air, so there's that too.

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

#138

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

> For one thing, okay, we did that and the alarm didn’t go off. What did we eliminate?

Weird EM interference from electronics, ultrasonic backup sensors, Magic Stuff Related To Reverse #1.

> 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.

Maybe it was caused by Magic Stuff Related To Reverse #2, or maybe it turns out the system is actually powered when you thought it isn't.

Looking over your other comments in this thread, I feel like you're approaching the topic from a position of someone who's an expert in cars and electronics, and thus has almost everything important in their memory already. But in cases when one isn't an expert with a thing one's debugging, I'd err on the side of doing the tests that seem ridiculous, at least if they're cheap to do. Discovering that it's probably Magic Stuff Related To Reverse #1 is a fair result, and should then be followed by reading up on what else gets activated/actuated when one's car gets switched to reverse.

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

#139

Post by molteanu »

I have this weird "turn on your laptop and your phone cannot see the wi-fi anymore" bug, or whatever this is. I've tested this with different phones, same issue. So, I'm turning on my phone wi-fi and it all works well. As soon as I start my laptop, the wi-fi goes off, it is not seen by my phone. The laptop is cable-connected. Sometimes all is fine so this is kinda random. Maybe on cloudy days it works (as remyp says of his ipads), haven't checked.
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