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I brought the carbon monoxide detector downstairs to show my wife after finding it with Claude and she said "you look like a cat that's proudly showing me the mouse that it caught".
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> My wife still tells this story to all her friends as one of my biggest life achievements. Everything I shipped, the companies I founded -- pales in comparison to finding a dead smoke alarm

Do you not feel this way about it yourself? I know I would.

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Hahaha amazing. Also cool to hear stories about headphones used as mics, I didn't think it would be sensitive enough for that.
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it didn't have to be sensitive or even high quality. The beep was loud enough to register on these improvised "mics" and the phase shift of up to 3ms (~50 samples at 16 kHz) was clearly visible
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The cross-correlation function can be applied to measure time shift between two waveforms, even those collected from different devices. The accuracy of this is not limited by the sample period. In fact, the two waveforms need not even have a common sample period. I think this approach could let simonw's network become self locating.
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Could you elaborate on how you converted the phase shift into a precise direction? Just a linear mapping? Or did you "hone in" by adjusting the stick until the phase shift disappeared, then proceed in that direction?
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Not the OP, but the phase shift of a known frequency can be converted into a distance (portion of a wavelength) which can then be used to triangulate between the two microphones, yielding a vector to the target.
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I have almost the opposite story.

Many many many years ago, I was a wee IT manager. Sort of a weird company, I was too young to be much more than smart kid who can install / fix anything.

Anyways, worked a few years there, made some friends, had one CAD engineer who was an utter jerk. In hindsight, probably a bully, but at the time just a really irritating person.

So that was my first foray into small electronics… worked up a small breadboard with a 555, some source of randomness I don’t remember now, a piezo speaker, and a 9v battery. It would emit a short beep at random intervals between roughly 60 and 240 minutes.

Stashed it above the ceiling tiles in his office on my last day at the company.

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In college, some friends bought (they were less imaginative than you) the equivalent, powered by a 2032 cell, and hid it in my room as a prank.

Good times. I bet it’s still magnetically attached to the inside of the steel riser column of one of their desk chairs, though the battery is likely long dead.

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Inevitable question: How long would the 9V battery have lasted?
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Many smoke alarms are also plumbed into the house power circuitry, so one with a dead battery will complain forever...
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> above the ceiling tiles

So I may in the future be the villain in a story like this if I am forgetful when I sell my apartment.

My upstairs neighbor is a moron who has flooded their apartment at least twice, so I have stashed moisture sensors into the access panels in multiple rooms as a sort of early warning system.

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omg, I suppose the "old fashioned" way of just finding the period then anticipating it in different spots wasn't enough this time? :)
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