Combating Harassing Use of Mosquito Noise Device?

amicold asks: "For a while now my neighborhood has had to deal with an elderly neighbor who has displayed a slightly paranoid attitude towards myself and the fellow younger-adults of the neighborhood, believing us to be attempting to harass him in our day-to-day activities. Recently, he installed a Mosquito ultrasonic noise device as an apparent attempt to 'get back at us' for our harassment. As the Mosquito emits a sound that's well out of his hearing range, he can't hear it, while most of the rest of the neighborhood is under 40 and can; at which point it's causing everyone a great deal of discomfort. Unfortunately, because the police also can't hear it, we can't get the authorities to do anything about it, leaving us empty-handed in our attempts at getting some peace and quiet back. What can we do to either help the police realize how disturbing this device is, or counteract it so that it's no longer disturbing us? And is this the first of what may be a growing trend of civilians using high-tech discomfort weapons as a method of neighborhood warfare?"

Comments

right back at them

[Anonymous Coward]

Suggest http://www.eminent-tech.com/RWbrochure.htm

Try this

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Take pictures of it. Print out the link you have in your post and any other documentation you can find on the thing. Ask a community service officer from the police to come out. She will probably be a she. She will probably be young, and since not carrying a gun, will not have spent a bunch of time on the firing range ruining her hearing. She will hear it, and since the docs clearly show it is designed to be annoying, she will be on your side. Probably. Maybe. You can try it and hope, anyway.

Plan B. You like Hendrix, right? With breakfast. Early. Turn it up to eleven.

Re:Try this

[Tlosk]

There was a piece on NPR radio a few weeks ago about an inventor who is marketing a device similar to the mosquito one in this article only it is specifically desinged to be annoying to teenagers (he had problems with them congregating in front of his store). Amusingly his daughter then subverted it for her own use by creating ringtones of the noise so that she could turn her phone on during school (since vibra mode can still be audible in a quiet classroom) and none of the teachers can hear it even though everyone else can lol.

They even had the ringtone as a downloadable ringtone there (you can't of course hear it at all if you're over 25 or so, as you age you lose the ability to hear in those outlier frequency ranges).

Here's a link to the story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=5434687

Re:Try this

[skam240]

Or at night, plan a raid, whereby you break the device in such a fashion that all the nice little leds stay on...

Screw that. I'd just head over there at 3 in the morning and smash it with a hammer (and I'm dead serious for those looking to mod this funny). I've had to deal with people of this sort in dealing with my condo association and let me tell you, there are certain segments of the elderly who literally hate everyone. Given that the police will do nothing about this, the only option is to take things into your own hands. These units are fairly expensive and some one on a limited budget (such as your typical elderly neighbor) will likely not have the resources to replace such a device. I would Hop the fence at three in the morning and anything that looked like it might be emitting the sound would be either stolen or smashed.

For anyone who has moral concerns over smashing the property of an elderly person, said person should take into consideration the fact that this elderly person has installed a device which targets young neighbors regardless of their actions or behavior. Punishing all individuals of a given group regardless of guilt is certainly immoral. Furthermore, said elderly neighbor has plenty of options through the local police department in dealing with disturbances and has no right to take things into their own hands

Given that the police will do nothing about this, one has no option but to take things into ones own hands.

Of course if you choose this course of action you should be careful in doing so and recongnize the fact that it is illegal. I'm really just saying what I would personally do and not necessarily what you should do.

Re:Try this

[Sir Holo]

I wonder if the fact that there was MP3 compression applied effected the sound. I'd rather hear an uncompressed version to be sure that I wasn't just perceiving some mpeg artefact.

No chance of it being an artifact. It's a single-frequency tone, so the MP3 version is loss-less. MP3 throws out the quieter frequency bands to get a file down to the desired bandwidth or "size." This sound has no quieter frequencies, just the one, so nothing is thrown out, hence no artifacts.

Get a young police officer...

[gweihir]

I think the only way to go is the legal route. Try to get a young police officer. If that fails, get an expert that can measure the signal and testify about ist impact on younger people. I would be surprised very much if hwat your neoghbour does is legal.

Beat frequency

[MichaelSmith]

Build a similar device to emit noise at a slightly different frequency. The result will be horrible sounds as the two waves interfere. The horrible sounds will seem to come from both your source and the original source. You may get the blame but at least the cops/etc will believe that an issue exists.

Hmmmm

[MyLongNickName]

Am I the only one that thinks this is a novel Slashvertizement?

How many of you thought "hmmmm. I could use this to really annoy xxx"?

And note that the link goes to a specifc supplier of such items. Not a generic link.... say a wiki. I mean, who really believes that some guy cannot get a cop under 40. Cannot figure out that he should talk to the police and explain more, or maybe go to see a lawyer... or maybe sneak into his neighbor's year with a baseball bat and a ski mask?

An economic war really...

[EverLurking]

Looks like the speaker cone on the device is rather exposed.

Betcha if you inject in some epoxy or expanding foam into said cone in quantities that won't be visible from the outside, the horn tweeter will stop making said annoying tone or at least attenuate the sound output or alter the frequency so that it won't be as bad.

Do it right and it'll probably still look like it was still working this way too. Much faster than trying to disassemble something and disable it while making it look like it's still working. The old fart can't hear it anyways, so he'd never know that you'd broken the horn tweeter as many others have pointed out.

You can also just go for a brute force/economic war approach:

Your cost: A couple of bucks for a tube of quick setting epoxy with syringe type applicator. Or, if you don't want to do this manually or the unit isn't readily accessible try some home made/customized paint balls filled with acid/epoxy/superglue/something nasty His cost: $600-$750 + shipping per unit disabled.

Just how many times do you think this guy will be able to afford to replace this device repeatedly? He's probably on fixed income so it's either the Mosquito or the Heart Medications/Doctor's Visits/Food/Heat/etc. The problem will soon go away given enough cheap paintballs I suspect.

War after all is really a matter of economics. Does the damage you cause cost more to your opponent than it does to you and which of you can continue spending money while racking up damage/cost the longest? The guys with the biggest budget or the ability to do massive damage to the other side for cheaper usually wins.

Dave

Re:Who's paranoid ?

[LanceUppercut]

I'm just amazed how many posters decide to spew their ignorant nonsense without even trying to understand the issue first! Several posetrs here referred to some "mosquito problem". What mosquito problem??? Do you have any idea about the purpose of "mosquito noise device"? Did you care to follow the link and get a clue first before posting?

For the lazy clueless types: the mosquito noise device has nothing to do with any actual mosquitos or "mosquito problems". The purpose of the device is to annoy young people in order to prevent them from congregating in certain areas. For example, some store owners don't like seeing teenagers gather in front of their stores (drives away customers). The mosquito noise device is specifically designed for the purpose of creating unbearable conditions for those teenagers in order to drive them away. The idea is that young people hear and get extermely annoyed by high frequency (mosquito) noise, while older people simply don't hear it.

So stop embarassing yourself with references to "mosquito problem". If the old man is really using that specific device, then the only reason he is using it is to annoy and harass those young people. The device has no other use of purpose.

Re:I call bullshit

[Stellian]

There's no way the little beeper in a phone would be able to reproduce the sound.

Well, I've just tried that mp3 ringtone on my K750i Sony Ericsson, and I can hear it very clearly from the other room. On the other hand, my 54 y/o mom can't, and my 29 y/o brother sais it's faint. In 24 myself.
That sound is only 15 KHz, and the mp3 has 48Khz sampling rate. And the buzzer in the mobile is perfectly able to reproduce high frequencies, it's the low freqs that cannot be reproduced.

Try not being a dick?

[whistlingtony]

I love the way everyone here says to go over and break his stuff.... Lovely...

Ok, so he's probably an annoying old paranoid crank. He's not going to stop being annoying. If you go over and break his stuff, he'll just become more annoying.

So don't go starting a neighborhood war.

You might try... oh... I don't know... TALKING to him about it? You know, person to person? And leave your attitude at the door.

If that fails, and it may well do so, go talk to your neighbors. Get about 20 of you. go knock on his door together and POLITELY state that his little toy is driving the entire neighborhood nuts and you'd all really appreciate him turning it off. Bring food. Make it an event. Hell, throw a neighborhood barbecue while you're at it.

Don't consider the situation an obstruction to be overcome. Instead, consider it a chance to meet your neighbors. Who knows, you might find out they are actual people, with lives and interests and stuff. Who knew?

And shame on those of you who immediately decided the best course of action was to go on a shadowrun against an old man. Sheesh.. People...

-T

A classic choice

[ydra2]

You could escalate the conflict by using high tech countermeasures which will piss him off and turn his relatives and friends against you, or make peace and have a nice quiet neighborhood. Hmmm, which way to go, never ending warfare on the one hand, or peace and quiet on the other?

If you go with high tech warefare then you will stimulate the economy by propping up the companies selling sonic noise cancelling systems. And he will of course provide even more stimulation to the economy when he installs an infra-red insect repellent that fries your border plants. And then you have to invest in a cryogenic thermal redirection unit to protect your flowers, after which he will escalate with a plastic dissolving mist spray device, all great news for the high tech neighborhood armament corporations, aka, the militarized neighborhood complex.

This will be fraught with unforseen complications and collateral damage. Your paper boy will refuse delivery, the water meter reader will not dare enter the property, causing an unpaid bill, and various charges about maliciously killing pets will pop up. You can stay the course until he gives up, but just make sure you understand that you may be liable for accidents caused by radio frequency interference with passing vehicle's electronics.

Or you could just walk up to the guy and say "Hi neighbor, is there a problem, and if so, lets work it out."

Naahh, not a chance. Get out the mini trebouchet and carpet bomb the hell out of him with marbles, eggs, and anything else you have handy! Screw the bastard more than he ever thought of screwing you! Worry about the consequences later, after all you don't have to pay for it, or at least not most of it.

Hat pins work wonders.

[TheMCP]

No no, you don't want to do anything he can press charges about, and you shouldn't do anything that isn't a direct step in solving the problem.

Find the noise device, find its speaker, and stick a hat pin in through the speaker grille to pierce the speaker. Then remove the hat pin and walk away. The hole will cause the speaker to tear itself and will cease making any meaningful volume of noise, and the old coot won't be able to hear the difference. More importantly, he can't really do anything with the police about it because to explain how it's broken he'd have to explain what it's supposed to do in the first place, and then he'd be admitting that your complaints about him were true. He can hardly complain "hey, they broke my illegal noise making machine!"