Undergrad Solve the Mystery of the Alarm Signal: Duncan's Story

[omega_minus]

One thing you could try to see if it’s battery powered or coming from the mains is to kill your main incoming circuit breaker right when it starts or possibly a bit earlier. If it doesn’t go off it could be something plugged in somewhere.

 

[russ_watters]

 

[jedishrfu]

Wow that’s a great video. He should’ve stretched it out a bit and uncovered Al Capones secret vault.

 

[A.T.]

That's great, but uses a lot of equipment.

I wonder if one could use some simple listening cone and point it in different directions, to estimate the source direction based on the volume changes.

 

[jedishrfu]

I think the video would be too long if he used one mic at a time with a cone. :-)

Also, this guy was clearly rather impatient to find the source of the beep.

 

[A.T.]

I think the video would be too long if he used one mic at a time with a cone. :-)

The guy in the video seems to be an audio engineer who has lots of mics laying around. I was looking for a practical solution that the OP could apply.

 

[jedishrfu]

He said in the video he went to the store to get these mikes.

You could probably do the same thing with two mikes and narrow things down in a binary search sort of scheme.

 

[russ_watters]

That's great, but uses a lot of equipment.

I wonder if one could use some simple listening cone and point it in different directions, to estimate the source direction based on the volume changes.

He said in the video he went to the store to get these mikes.

You could probably do the same thing with two mikes and narrow things down in a binary search sort of scheme.

I tried and you can get to the right room (or maybe better) with a cell phone and a sound level app...if it is in a room. If it is in an above/below crawl space it may be more difficult to localize.

It's probably also possible to rig up a shotgun mic or mess with the microphone channels to make it directional.

I was actually hoping he was going to go a little more advanced than just "which is louder" and do a passive sonar scheme to localize it.