Things that go “meep” in the night

2/9/2012 5:02 PM EST

I have a watch that does that. Every so often I get it into a mode where it "meeps" every hour, and I have to find and read the manual (no small task, especially the finding) to work out how to switch the hourly "meep" off.

And they always seem to make the "meeps" at a frequency where your ears are not very directional...

2/9/2012 6:20 PM EST

In my case the "meep" was cell phone in my wife's purse. No flashing displays would have helped and the muffled sound gave no directionality at all.

2/9/2012 9:51 PM EST

And of course it's always at night since batteries operate less efficiently at lower temperatures. Perhaps the need to latch the low battery trigger until a light sensor indicates it's no longer night time? ;-)

2/10/2012 3:21 PM EST

I remember long ago when every night about 3am my fire alarm would actually go off (no fires, though). I replaced the batteries, checked the wiring, everything I could think of. One night I was so annoyed I threw a shoe at it (luckily a slipper, not a boot). A cockroach fell out. A shot of Raid fixed the problem.

2/10/2012 3:23 PM EST

In Arizona, we have crickets that lead to midnight-annoyance.... but crickets are self-propelled.

When you look at those lights, just imagine that each is probably 25mW. You own ten, I own ten, everybody owns 10, and there are 300M Americans. That makes 75MW of glowing LEDs!!!

2/10/2012 3:42 PM EST

I was spending the night in my sister's guest/junk room, about to fall asleep when I hear what sounds like a cricket chirp. Try to ignore it, but it keeps repeating. Grab my shoe and try to find him, but hard to localize the sound, too brief.

Get my watch and time the period between chirps. Exactly the same, so it's artificial.

Knowing when the next chirp will be, I eventually find the general area of the sound: a group of moving boxes. After searching through several, I finally discover a smoke detector carefully packed away, battery on its last legs...

A truly evil prank: hide a detector with an aging battery where someone will never find it.

2/10/2012 3:43 PM EST

A friend and I spent a weekend trying to discover from what and where this cricket-like sound was coming from.

He told me a month or so later he had tracked it down to a smoke detector.

2/15/2012 3:43 AM EST

The BBC engineers in london had a gadget that sounded just like their pagers but bleeped only briefly every so many minutes, just enough to stop whichever senior engineer was staying overnight in an office from sleeping but short enough burst to ensure they never found it. Apparently these evil pranks had been going on for some years, indeed they may still be doing so now. It was a fun place to start my career but I'm glad of the quieter life now. :-)

2/17/2012 12:42 AM EST

Hello Max,

Wasn't Meep the little alien on Phineas and Ferb? Sorry about that. This actually happened to us about six weeks ago. Turns out the fire alarm in my son's bedroom in our recent addition had a faulty hot wire connection to the 110 volt house wiring. So the alarm ran off batteries for about six months and then complained. Since my meter didn't show the 110 volts present, I climbed into the attic to hunt down the problem. Then realized all I had to do was take the unit apart from the hallway to fix the wire. My wife says this is because I always expect the problem to be a worst case scenario. Bummer. But at least it was a low cost problem to fix.

Cheers,

Ralph

2/17/2012 8:50 AM EST

My own meep story came to a conclusion fairly recently. Literally for years, something would meep at exactly midnight for exactly 1 minute in our basement rec room. As David A noted, the frequency was just high enough to conceal its direction. Since the room got second billing to our living/home-theatre room, it got little use and I just never bothered to try finding the source. One late evening as I sat down there, the "meep" commenced as usual, and I finally resolved to find it.

Deductive reasoning led me to suspect that the sound came from a closet full of now unused ski clothing and winter jackets. It took two nights due to the short duration of the meeping (gotta be a watch), of systematically unloading the closet during the sounding minute. The first night, the final meep was still in the closet and not in the pile of jackets on the nearby sofa. All hung back up and deemed "clean", the next night saw the remaining "unclean" items frantically dumped out before the source extinguished. It was definitely in that pile but stopped before I could zero in. One by one I checked pockets; a thigh pocket in an old pair of boarder pants yielded the culprit; a wristwatch. There was a moment of indescribable satisfaction in finally silencing the little bugger (by its buttons, not a hammer, of course).

2/19/2012 8:00 AM EST

I had a similar problem with a smoke detector recently - beeping to indicate low battery. Even though I know the location of the three units in the house - standing under one and waiting a few minutes for the next beep - it was still frustratingly difficult to tell (due to echoes) if that was the one!

I certainly agree with the comments about inadequate usability design, for an object meant to be noticed!
The problem is the short duration of the beep - by the time you turn your head to get a fix on the direction, it has stopped. Also the high frequency is difficult to get a direction fix on.
They should make at least two sounds (beep-beep) to be more detectable.

Similar thing for an hourly chime on watches: many give a brief "pip" - just enough to disturb you, but too short for you to realise what it is. Again, they should use a beep-beep to be properly noticed - or turned off. [Bumping one button on my watch toggles chime on/off - annoying.]

When our children were younger (pre-school), it seemed that just about every toy played a tune, made beeps or spoke when touched. Invariably, while trying to move about quietly after bedtime, someone would bump a pile of toys and trigger sounds. A talking toy nearly gave their grandmother a heart-attack.
Most old toys in storage have now had their batteries removed, but sometimes I still hear a noise when moving boxes!

2/23/2012 2:44 PM EST

It must have something to do with solar flares.

Simply amazing the timing of this article, we had 3 meeps yesterday afternoon and then last night and all were traced to smoke detectors.

The bird was chirping back at the smoke detectors, the Cats were curious about the bird chirping and the dogs were being wimps due to the constant meeps.

All of these are AC powered with 9 volt alkaline backup battery.

Why can't the designers of these smoke detectors put a 9 volt rechargable battery in them with a suitable charging circuit that keeps the battery topped off all the time.

Mike

2/23/2012 3:15 PM EST

True it is pretty humorous except when it happens at 3AM.

My house sounded like an insane punk rock version of Old McDonalds Farm, what with the smoke detectors all out of sync, the bird chirping and flapping around, the Cats Meowing and the dogs wimpering.

I'm thinking of when I retire from electronics I may open up an electronic device skeet shooting (or MEEP shooting) range.

2/23/2012 6:52 PM EST

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this frustrating curiosity of AC powered smoke detectors with backup batteries -- they also meep when they need replacement, presumably when their tiny amount of radioactive material is no longer sufficiently able to ionize the air in the detector.

More than once, I have been awakened in the middle of the night by the meep noise and had to locate the offending detector, unplug it from the AC connector dangling through the ceiling and then yank the back up battery too. Only then would the meeping stop!