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Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

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Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#51

Post by sombragris »

smeej wrote: post #12

The HTC One smartphone came with a programmable IR port. All you had to do was determine the TV brand (easy if you can see it), then point the top of the phone at the TV pushing the "power" button until it went off. Then you knew you had the right configuration. I mostly used it for turning volume down in waiting rooms or at bars, but a bar was also where I figured out most of their TVs tend to be set to the same con…

My current phone is a (Xiaomi) POCO M4 Pro. It has both an IR port and a 3.5mm jack. It's a great device, although it doesn't support 5G.

Sometimes, when the remote is too far, I control my TV with it.

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#52

Post by bryanlarsen »

yurishimo wrote: post #21
smeej wrote: post #12

The HTC One smartphone came with a programmable IR port. All you had to do was determine the TV brand (easy if you can see it), then point the top of the phone at the TV pushing the "power" button until it went off. Then you knew you had the right configuration. I mostly used it for turning volume down in waiting rooms or at bars, but a bar was also where I figured out most of their TVs tend to be set to the same con…

I would be shocked if this doesn’t exist as a small dongle you could plug into your phone directly or operate wirelessly. If you’re someone who already has a few pieces of EDC, maybe it could be stashed on a keychain.

Independent dongle, you don't need to plug it into your phone: https://www.tvbgone.com/

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#53

Post by redbell »

This reminds me of this guy [1]

  My neighbor is smoking on the balcony, and smoke goes to my home with little kids. I talked with him several times, didn't help. It's his territory, so not much I can do, besides closing the doors. But at least i can use this fake smoke detector with VERY ANNOYING random buzzer. It starts buzzing when i connect to it my iPhone via BLE. Makes it not as relaxing to smoke on the balcony as it planned to be for him. I'm going to train this mofo with reinforcement learning like a fkn Pavlov Dog.
___________

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1ojv6x4/smokin...

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#55

Post by cindyllm »

redbell wrote: post #53

This reminds me of this guy [1] My neighbor is smoking on the balcony, and smoke goes to my home with little kids. I talked with him several times, didn't help. It's his territory, so not much I can do, besides closing the doors. But at least i can use this fake smoke detector with VERY ANNOYING random buzzer. It starts buzzing when i connect to it my iPhone via BLE. Makes it not as relaxing to smoke on the balcony a…

[dead]

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#56

Post by toast0 »

udkl wrote: post #30
unglaublich wrote: post #11

My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.

I don't know why we don't build with concrete like the rest of the world ... that should give us a higher noise isolation than wood

Majority construction anywhere is whatever can be built with the least cost.

In the US and Canada timber framing for buildings under about 6 feet is least cost. Other places without a lot of timber availability tend to build with other things.

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#57

Post by arjie »

unglaublich wrote: post #11

My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.

A lot of apartment construction must be either poorly converted or poorly constructed. I've lived in multi-unit buildings in a few places and sound isolation is pretty good. In London, I met a family at the lift and the mother apologized for how loud her children had been that weekend. My bedroom was against their living room. I honestly hadn't heard a peep.

Then here in San Francisco my particular unit is next to the garbage chute and I haven't ever heard someone putting their garbage down it. My wife and I run the 3D printer through the night and our neighbor hasn't said anything yet. It's about 57 dB from 1 m away so that's why I suppose. We do rarely hear their kids when they wail, as kids do, but not otherwise.

One of the things I do when we consider a place to live in, though, is that I play music at max volume on my wife's phone and then check from various parts of the home. I also talk to yell till my wife notices on the other side of bedroom doors and so on. To be honest, many places can be built to be quite quiet. My daughter sleeps above the work / office and it's about 29 dB right now with the printer running.

Naturally if one cannot sleep at 29 dB our home wouldn't work or you'd have to turn off the printer overnight, but overall it seems fine for me.

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#58

Post by 2ICofafireteam »

unglaublich wrote: post #11

My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.

Where I am in British Columbia, there are sound isolation requirements in the building code so the landlords can't be cheap...but it doesn't help with older or non-permitted work.

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#59

Post by Archelaos »

miduil wrote: post #28

What a story. Be friendly to your neighbors, otherwise they might turn off your TV! When I was living in Berlin, the entire apartment complex had a WhatsApp group and people would (of course it's Berlin) party a lot. People would ask each other to turn down the volume, which worked for the most part - at least for severe partying. Best messages were like "you've been partying all night, it's 2pm, I need some silence…

The collective has already decided that you must turn the volumn down at 10 PM.

Re: Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

#60

Post by ErroneousBosh »

A very long time ago, in the late 1990s, I worked for an early web design company and we had quite a nice little office in a shop unit, with computers, some plants, a couple of comfy sofas, but no television.

Then we got a commission to do some work for the local Sony dealer. We did some webby stuff for them, and they gave us some cameras and stereos to play with, and asked if we wanted a TV.

Yes, that'd be great actually, we were just discussing that.

So the guy gave us this lovely big 36" widescreen TV that was a customer return, but they didn't know what was wrong with it. It had been replaced under warranty at about a year old, and (judging by the service menu timers) had hardly even been used.

The first time everyone (even me, although I'm not really into football, it's part of community spirit) sat down to watch a football match together, the fault became apparent. Now I had heard someone say that the TV seemed to turn itself off right as the film was getting to the good bit, but I'd never seen that. But right here just as Hearts were about to take a shot at goal and knock St Mirren out of the cup, off it went. Turning it off and on again brought it back, until the next exciting moment and off it went.

Well this was just annoying, so with the time-honoured cry of "Hold my beer!" I got the tools out. Got the back off the TV, took a look around on the PCB for anything glaringly obvious and... and... annnnndd.....

... you know in books and magazine articles about soldering they show a diagram of a "dry joint" as being like a little volcano caldera of solder on the pad, and a little crusty ball of solder on the component leg with a perfect wee ring around it? Yup, on one leg of the line output transformer. That was it. A touch with the soldering iron, on all its pins, and tighten the little clamping screw that held it to the PCB once it was good and snug on the board, and that was it.

The TV lasted far longer than the web development company, and indeed it lasted longer than the company that came after it.

Oh, why did it only do it when the film got to the good bit, or when they were about to score a goal? Because it got louder, and the vibrations from the speaker wobbled the dry joint enough to break its contact, and the safety protection circuit kicked in and tripped the power supply.

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