My next door neighbors have recently been playing their music really loud so that I can hear it through the walls. I've gotten tired of having to bang on the walls each time to get them to quiet down, so I decided to automate some payback. The premise is that my device will listen for loud music playing through the wall, and when the volume breaks a pre-defined threshold and hears sustained music for 10 seconds it will start playing a CD player with annoying music and blast it back at them. After playing for a certain period of time it will pause the music and go back into monitoring mode. If the neighbors are still loud it will blast the music again and again indefinitely.
Watch the video to see the device in action!
Watch the video to see the device in action!
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Signing UpStep 1: Supplies
I used the following items for this device:
1 Breadboard
1 Arduino Uno
1 5v power source to power the Arduino (I powered it through USB from my laptop)
1 Electret microphone
1 Green 10 LED bar graph (individual LEDs will work too)
1 Red 10 LED bar graph (individual LEDs will work too)
1 Orange LED (or any other color)
1 NPN Transistor 2N3904 or similar
2 0.1uF capacitor
1 100k ohm resistor
2 10k ohm resistor
13 220 ohm resistor (Or whatever will run your LEDs at 5v)
1 CD player
2 Big ol' speakers
Connector wire
I ran out of outputs with the Arduino Uno so my volume meter only uses 2 of the red bars. An Arduino Mega would provide more outputs and make a better volume meter.
1 Breadboard
1 Arduino Uno
1 5v power source to power the Arduino (I powered it through USB from my laptop)
1 Electret microphone
1 Green 10 LED bar graph (individual LEDs will work too)
1 Red 10 LED bar graph (individual LEDs will work too)
1 Orange LED (or any other color)
1 NPN Transistor 2N3904 or similar
2 0.1uF capacitor
1 100k ohm resistor
2 10k ohm resistor
13 220 ohm resistor (Or whatever will run your LEDs at 5v)
1 CD player
2 Big ol' speakers
Connector wire
I ran out of outputs with the Arduino Uno so my volume meter only uses 2 of the red bars. An Arduino Mega would provide more outputs and make a better volume meter.
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thassaj says: Jun 14, 2012. 11:24 AMReply
Fantastic - I have had noisy neighbors over the years and have used various amusing techniques to get them to shut up. Borrowing the kilowatt linear amplifier from the local ham radio club was a winner: I put the VOX (voice operated switch) on to a sensitivity such that once the noise got annoying it would key up the transmitter in AM mode and overload the stereo. The guy "learned" not to turn up his stupid stereo, and finally took it into the shop where they said "nothing is wrong with your stereo" - he was enraged that they didn't believe him that whenever he turned it up there was this thundering bassy sound
Here's an idea, go next door and ask them to turn it down? If they don't I am sure the Police will come and issue a noise violation . . .
Yes, it works, nice setup, but I still think there are better ways.
One guy played his TV too loudly so I wired some SN 7400 gates up with a capacitor to make an RF square wave oscillator with lots of nice harmonics. I just needed to tune the capacitor and poof - TV signal gone. Wouldn't work with cable obviously :-)
Jus Sayin'-
Age and cunning will always emerge victorious over youth and innocence.!
I still like the idea of playing the offending material back at the offender, preferably at 4am.
My solution was accomplished by using the following:
1) 75 Watt per channel stereo with volume almost to max (so I would not blow my amplifier or speakers).
2) CD player, with recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (paused/cued up to about 10 seconds before the cannon's go off).
3) Pair of Big 18" 3-way speakers placed with front side face down against my floor.
When their music go too loud next time, I just un-paused the CD and let it "rip" until the cannons were done firing. Paused CD re-cued back to just before start of cannons again, waited a minute and NEVER had to do use it again!
Use a small microphone to record what they're playing, and use a surface transducer mounted on the wall to play their own audio back at them, but delayed by .7 second.
They will go insane in short order.
you'll need to record from a position far away from your own transducer to avoid a feedback loop, but putting a hole in your own wall (.5"), and putting the mic in the wall hopefully right behind their audio source will do it. Just isolate the mic with some foam around the cord where it touches the wall. Put your transducer as far away as you can while still being on the shared wall.
I know this will work. Really.
Clever.
And I would not worry about loud 40hz tones and the fabled "death from low tones". Mythbusters found no damage to human tissue (other than eardrums, obviously :-)) in their tests.
I would offer a few suggestions although I like the premise of the Instructable.
1) Find the studs in the wall. I know some will say I rent, thats what Spackle and paint are for.
2) Get large Bass speakers either from your speakers are search for the largest you can find cheap.
3) Make a frame with speaker and mount it to the studs facing offending neighbors. Frame should be thick enough to support vibrating speaker but close to wall as possible. you might even be able to add some sound dampening around the speaker to be less annoying to you.
4) look for a cheap amp, Mono is even better , You only care about the low end.
5) then hook up your system. Most of the annoying low end should be directed at the Annoying Neighbors
6) See if you can find old MODEM Connecting sounds or something, Don't blast music back, Blast annoying sounds.
1) Plain old 60 Hz hum. (Don't plug your speaker into the wall socket, though!)
2) The sound of a "whistling kettle" coming to a boil on a stove and left shrieking for a minute or two.
3) A noisy, clattering old refrigerator. Mic it close to the compressor.
4) The sound of a ringing telephone, at random intervals through 24 hrs.
I've said too much...
Nothing like a stereo up loud, with a BAD hum....
I think this retaliation system is an excellent idea in that it can be customized to different annoying retaliations. Perhaps you could rig it up to dial their phone when it detects loud music - that way you aren't blasting music yourself and they will either get annoyed by their phone going off all the time or figure out to turn down their music.
I'm very passive, so personally I would try to be more diplomatic. Creamaster's idea of email the landlord is a very good one too. Perhaps you could set your arduino to simply tally up the time they blast loud music, and then at the end of the week you could send an update to your landlord and insert the exact amount of time they've been annoying neighbors.
I definitely got a kick out of this 'ible, though! Thanks for sharing.
http://lifehacker.com/5852903/silence-noisy-neighbors-by-transmitting-signals-through-their-own-speakers
You get the idea? Instead of your switch turning your own amp & Music, Your neighbors NOISE will be their own, " WATERLOO ".
Please make it and tell us how! :-)
It appears that your neighbours are sociopaths. Try not to join them in that classification, and seek police help concerning noise abatement. Otherwise this is a great Instructable that could be used for far better applications.
But as mentioned earlier, folks who feel like its their right to bother the rest of the world, wont listen. What I would suggest, is you do a little surveylance. Find out what stereo or TV they have and get yourself a universal remote that is compatible with their system. Then you can trigger the appropriate code and either turn up the volume even more, (so they get in trouble with more people and the land lord is forced to do something about it) or you can turn the volume down yourself...
Can you imagine if you turn on their own stereo or TV late at night and blast it? LOL!!! Do it on a weekend, so you can enjoy it and still have time to sleep...
Kudos for Evil Much.
Thanks!
There are some awful LOSER "Cult of Alcoholics Anonymous" tracks for free do download by the hundreds.....
Especially the really "brain dead and stupid", clubby and I can't think for myself christian style ones.....
Play them up LOUD........
Or better yet, get the crappiest PA horn style speakers... they work really well for human voice sounds...
And stick one near an open window, that makes it wasy for them to hear it, and not a lot of other people.
The mental "jesus speak" AA tapes just drive them mental......
Put it on repeat...
Completely spastic.....
You did a terrific job from start to finish . I made the opposite project a while back. I looked for silence ( no audio ) on a TV channel for a period of about 15 seconds to trip a reset function . It was a challenge to figure it all out , so I know what you must have went through . thanks for sharing !!
Build_it_Bob
Open Source ...teaching those who yearn to learn...
Arduino RULES !!!
Just a rumor that probably shouldn't be tried at home.....
Try sitting in a room with a boom box for a while and you will most likely get very uncomfortable in your stomach area. I was once at an exhibition where they were showing off monster boom boxes fitted in cars. My niece got physically sick and every time they turned it on most people in the exhibition hall left.
Alternatively ghostly whispering and other similar sounds during the night.
I might suggest finding another solution, one that leads by example and improves our world, rather than continuing the stupidity of the lowest common denominator.
It would seem you have the smarts, use them for good, not evil...
Since this is supposed to be a positive forum, let me suggest that you should use your smarts and Adruno to send an email or a tweet to the landlord/web/log, showing how often the neighbours play their music too loud as proof, not punishment. Also, you should set that decibel level to whatever the legal limit is, not your own personal preference.
I think this is a much better solution. Not mine, but user Creamaster. Credit where credit is due.
Vet to vet, thanks for your service!
I still have those sockets and think about that every time I see those initials, good times.
Using BASIC, I programmed a simple loop in which a note of 1kHz (the time clock pips) of random duration between 0.5 and 3 seconds with another random duration of 1-120 seconds. It was not possible to guess how many beeps would be heard nor the length of them or the timing in between. The neighbours went nuts after just one day of it played through an amplifier.
Yes, that's how wars get started, and in this case, won. Diplomacy didn't work andsometimes you just gotta fight fire with fire - it's all some people understand.
If you don't get how effective this is, have a go with yourself!
1) Plain old 60 Hz hum. (Don't plug your speaker into the wall socket, though!)
2) The sound of a "whistling kettle" coming to a boil on a stove and left shrieking for a minute or two.
3) A noisy, clattering old refrigerator. Mic it close to the compressor.
1. if you know they have a shelf on one of their walls see if you can pump out some low frequency sound right up against it, maybe knock some stuff off the shelf.
2. siren noises. lets face it if you hear a cop's siren coming in your wall you will duck and hide whatever you are doing.
3. use the mic for a second use get some feedback going.
4. explosions from a really intense movie over and over again
5. 8-bit music.
6. have it trigger an emp generator and you can just shut down their system instead of competing with it (most people will not be able to figure out what it is and just buy a new stereo)
The trick, of course, is that your inverse sound must be generated with a very, very small delay, and that means sensors and electronics that respond extremely fast, and over a wide range of frequencies, for music. An interesting problem for a technically-minded neighbor.....
Here is why I think it would not work.
1) The sound that he is hearing if a muffled Bass sound, why it might be able to reverse the sound it would only effect his place not so much the annoying neighbors.
2) I don't know if it easier to negate hi's or lows, that's for an audio expert. So don't know how well it would work.
3) You would be talking sampling and reverse playback very quick, which sounds like expensive hardware.
Now on a somewhat promising although rather disturbing note: I did see a show on non lethal technology and there is at least one company ( probably more ) that is making a directional sound system that does this very thing to be used on Protesters ( Apparently The Right to Free Speech does not guarantee The right to be Heard), I don't know how far they are but on the documentary it looked like it might already be in place.
The CCRMA program at Stanford U has done some really astounding work in echo cancellation which is a similar (but definitely more complex) process. I can't find a video of a demo for the life of me, but if you ever come upon it, it will blow your mind.
I had a next door neighbor that liked loud music. I had an amplifier/receiver thing that I used to run my turntable (33/45/78, remember?), an average pair of wooden encased floor speakers and I got a microphone. I made a megaphone out of cardboard, coated the inside with tinfoil and put it tightly against the common wall so it would feed the sound into the microphone. I laid the speakers tightly against our common wall and hooked everything up to the receiver. I turned the base and the treble all the way up and turned the âmidrangeâ knob all the way down. When they would start playing their loud music I would slowly turn up my amp until their music sounded simply awful and they would turn their music completely off. Then I would turn my amplifier off until the next time they started playing their music. Soon they stopped playing the music and I hoped they thought something was wrong with their equipment and kept replacing the components until they just gave up or went completely broke.
Since we are now in the 21st century, I guess someone that knew what they were doing could do a better job using the technology of ânoise canceling headphonesâ, but I donât know anything about all that new stuff. Good luck,
Bob
1) Just blast Tom Jones when you wake up in the morning. They might realize not everyone enjoys their music.
2) Let them have their fun when you are at work. Proceed with your original plan with "Who let the dogs out?".
I would always first a) ask them politely to turn down the volume, b) speak to my landlord and, if the loud music was accompanied by large crowds of noisy drunks, contact my local police service regarding all-night parties, etc.
I did find that rather than play "modern" music at thumping volumes, I had much greater success using the old masters, particularly Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies, or Opera. Classical music and Opera is anathema to most head-bangers, (I'm not overly fond of it myself) and usually only a couple of doses were required to get the message across. Sometimes, a Sunday morning concert of church organ music, Beethoven, or Luciano Pavarotti arias, following a Saturday night ruckus next door, would make the point.
Anyhow, in one extreme case while in grad school (this is pre-PC, pre-Arduino days), I borrowed a mic and calibrated decibel meter and an auto-advance 35mm camera with a remote shutter from our research lab. The sound meter had some handy features - a plug-in paper strip-chart recorder (I can hardly believe we used to use such things) with a mechanical time/date-stamp, and a level-adjustable "trigger" that closed a switch connected to an external jack. It has originally been used to measure noise of aircraft on landing approach over residential neighborhoods
I breadboarded a 555 timer circuit from the "555 Cookbook" that was triggered by the sound meter and started two timers and a switching circuit.
When the audio level exceeded the legal limit for residential noise (I think it was 85 dB) for 120 seconds or more, the 555 board would trip the camera shutter & take a photo of the db meter, a 24-hour clock borrowed from my ham shack, and a calendar, then advance one frame. (I think I also put the front page of that day's newspaper in the shot as well). When the noise level dropped below the limit mark for 2 minutes or more, a second photo would be taken giving a duration. The strip chart gave corroboration of sound levels.
After about 2 weeks of "evidence gathering", I took the pictures and charts to the landlord. The neighbors were well known to our neighborhood police station for loud parties, so an obliging local copper came along. Presented with specific evidence of times, dates, and noise levels, the landlord decided to evict the noisy neighbors, rather than be cited for "maintaining a public nuisance.
This was a non-confrontational way of dealing with the situation, and given the atmosphere of the times, I'd use something similar today if the need ever arose.
I've used the following method to be successful: Whenever they play music extra loud, go to the outside breaker box and flip off the power to their unit. Quickly walk back into your apartment before they come out. If you do this consistently, you can condition them to think that their loud music is drawing too much power and flipping the breaker.
I was thinking of creating a false wall between your living area and theirs. Like the thickness of a 2 by 4. Install lots of insulation as a noise barrier.
Okay, while you are building it, go ahead and insert a couple of big, thin speakers in there, also and rig up that delayed feedback thing.
Set up some infrasound and start a rumour about ghost sighting.
Maybe research old local newspaper archives for any suitable events to give a bit of substance to the rumours, though that would probably not be needed.
My thoughts? GET BIGGER SPEAKERS AND FIND AN AMP THAT GOES TO 11.
People who do this--not respect their neighbors--do not understand or care about the consequences of having loud music. Or leaving garbage next to the door. Or not taking in their mail for months. Or any of that other stuff that they do that normal people don't do. They don't care if they get kicked out of their apartment, as they most likely only have that big stereo as their only worldly possession and they are on some sort of government assistance anyway so they will get kicked out of one place and then move into another no problem. I live next to two people who fight CONSTANTLY and I have called the police on them because it was 1AM and I had to go to work in 4 hours. How many times have I personally called the cops on them? 3 times. How many times have I called the apartment complex? 4 times. How many times have I personally gone over there and given them a verbal thrashing? 5 times. 5 TIMES!
Clearly, the apartment complex doesn't want them out as they are paying rent which is how they make money. So they just tell them to quiet down... Which they do for like 2 days. Then it is back to fighting and throwing things around in the apartment and slamming the door over and over and over...
Clearly, the police can't do anything because even if they saw him hitting her she would just not press charges and then they just wasted their time. And frankly, I think that they should be out doing better things like arresting people who are murdering people rather than responding to a domestic abuse call...
So clearly I am the only person who cares enough to do anything about the situation so I am doing the only thing I can. And if that is playing music back at them, then so be it. If that is going over to the apartment and yelling at them to shut up and stop living together if you truly cannot stand one another, then so be it. If that is taking the garbage that they leave next to their door for 4 days when the garbage chute is right down at the end of the hallway and opening the bag and dumping it in front of their door, so be it. If their dog constantly tears up the side by their door whenever he goes out and they laugh about it each and every time so that makes me plant sticker and thorny plants by their side, so be it.
Because some neighbors aren't looking for anything logical, like peace and quiet. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
one side no neighbors, the other side some people of color.
they liked to play their music REALLY loud(literally knicknacks falling off the shelves). so one day the limit was reached and my brother put his speakers(the size of a medium chest freezer) up against the wall, put on the dark side of the moon album at almost max volume on replay, and we left for the day(around 6-8 hours).
needless to say nothing was ever heard from them the rest of the time we were there
If you're not in the apartment who cares if the neighbour makes noise? And aren't you doing EXACTLY the thing you dislike them doing, but in a new and even more annoying manner? At least they're enjoying their music. Your soul purpose here is to annoy. Of your intention is to upset others, you need to reassess your thought process. If I was the landlord dealing with these two tenants, you'd be the one I evicted.
You're lucky if the neighbours don't escalate this situation. This is such a stupid idea. Will I be reading an instructable next week on how to beat someone up without leaving any bruises - posted by your neighbor? I hope not.
Remember, you have to live with these people, not against them.
I don't want to read about this story in the papers eh.
Unfortunately, people who follow the rules and the "norms" of a polite society often have their lives interfered with by those who don't give a hoot about rules, courtesy, or pretty much anything else. There's sometimes no real answer to that, unless they move or you do, Sad but true.
I believe it was Robert. A. Heinlein who said that one of the first signs of a dying culture was the disappearance of good manners.
Thanks Creamaster for a truly good solution that will probably lead to something positive!
Respect!
To return their own basses, as said by other commenters makes sense.
There are also so called rumblers or shakers. These are more or less loudspeakers without membranes.
They use whatever you mount them as membranes.(Your neighbours wall)
Luckily my neighbours live in their own houses.
You mentioned that you didnt have enough pins to power all of the LEDs but you have 5 pins that are not connected. It wont fill all of the LEDs but at least you can get a bit more range. Solution: You can use your analog input pins as digital output pins too. D14 (A0) through D19 (A5).
Cheers!
A) be their own music and
B) the delay would ruin whatever song they were listening to.
They eventually got some device that pinged when a certain decibel was reached to try to make them aware of their own behaviour. You could totally use this for that.
BTW, yes i've asked the fool to turn it down SO many times.
In the past I have gone next door and then asked the neighbor to come and listen to the amount of noise I was hearing on my side of the wall. In MOST cases the neighbor does not realise what was happening and was willing to turn the sound down so that I did not have to listen to their choice in music.
On the RARE occasions when good neighborly manners have not prevailed I have simply turned my heaviest speakers against the wall and whilst pushing the very beginning of Queen's "We are the Champion's", the very heavy BASS BEAT part, on a loop, through my 120W mini PA system. On one occasion I had to do this over and over for 3 days every time the neighbor turned up their stereo until they got the hint.
I think that if you leave your system armed and active whilst you are out then you may run into some noise complaints yourself......
Lets face it, if your not there what does it matter how loud they play their music?
So, i found very interesting this device... or the idea itself. :D
You say that you are running out of arduino pins to power the LEDs.
Have a look at http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut which shows how to use one or more shift registers to drive a large number of LEDs using only three arduino pins.
Keep up the good work, and I hope your neighbours learn to keep the noise to a dull roar very soon :)
However I'm not sure a technical answer would solve the problem : who would care about being too noisy if you make noise yourself ???
That's why noisy neighbors are a nuisance : they don't give a damn about the noise you make when they're noisy. One should make noise when they're at rest !!!â¦
So a behavioral counter power has to be devised more than a noisier answerâ¦
I'm not sure I am really clear on that â¦
Anyway project is fun !;
constantly having 30 seconds of music playing through it would definitely shake up the experience of listening said music
i think its a very awesome way to deal with neightbours :P
you should make it in some kind of kit, could even make it universal by using a servo to physically press the play/pause button
what id do is instead of just the speakers run the bass channels through a really high powered amplifier :3
theyd get the point. i hope.
BTW do you have neighbors on the other side of your house?
"Loud noise annoys me, I will make loud noise!"