Locating the source of a mysterious beep

(simonwillison.net)

27 points | by bigwheels 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • solyin 31 minutes ago
    MKBHD demos the the FOTRIC TD2e Acoustic Imaging Camera.

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ai1gIWacf0I

    It costs ~$1,000 so you'd probably rent it if you're only going to use it once, but it's a neat gadget.

    • ortusdux 12 minutes ago
      Great thing for tool checkout/rental at a makerspace!
  • adm4 11 minutes ago
    wonderful! Thanks for sharing. I thought about doing this to track the sounds moving around in my stomach... it is interesting how well the mic on your smartphone works at picking up stomach sounds
  • tristanj 48 minutes ago
    You can also solve this in O(logn) using a physical binary search:

    1) Move half the boxes to another room.

    2) Listen for a beep and determine which room the beep comes from.

    3) Take the boxes in that room and split it in half again.

    4) Repeat until one box is left.

    • ARandomerDude 40 minutes ago
      > Move half the boxes to another room.

      Alternatively, no.

  • raldi 18 minutes ago
    WHAT WAS MAKING THE BEEP!!?!?!
    • gandreani 17 minutes ago
      Hahahaha. You should slow down when you read

      "The system worked as intended. It gave me the position of the beep to within about 40cm, then I dug through that specific pile of boxes and found an ancient carbon monoxide detector that desperately wanted its batteries replaced."

      • raldi 15 minutes ago
        Oh, thanks. Not sure how I missed that in the very middle of the piece :D

        Maybe I should have asked Claude to help triangulate it for me.

  • gregsadetsky 1 minute ago
    Simon's LLM's beeping finder app vs https://annoyingpcb.com/

    Who would win?? :-)

    I lack the courage to plant such a PCB prank device... it really feels like you could drive people completely crazy haha

  • gwbas1c 20 minutes ago
    You know what might have been easier... Going through the boxes!
  • pavo-etc 57 minutes ago
    Woah this is cool. Another interesting simonw project based around sound through browsers. Lots of simple real world problems that can be tackled with this.
  • delichon 39 minutes ago
    Could you build this into a HUD for a cat, tuned to mouse squeeks? Asking for a friend.
  • minfazhai 8 minutes ago
    [flagged]