Here [Matthew Br] explains the situation he’s in with the neighbors that share this wall of his apartment. When they listen to music they like it loud and so he gets to ‘enjoy’ the experience as well. But he can’t ignore it any longer, and has decided to use a sound volume detector to blast some tunes right back at them.
He taped a microphone to the wall and wired it up to his Arduino. It monitors incoming sound and, using an adjustable threshold, it will trigger when the neighbors are too loud. We think he was wise to include some time filtering that makes sure the loud noises are sustained and not just the result of someone bumping into the wall. When the system does detect loud music for a sustained period it triggers [Matthew’s] own CD player to pump out Who Let the Dogs Out? by the Baha Boys. It will play for a period of time, then shut off to listen and see if the neighbors are still rowdy.
He documents an actual run in the latter half of the clip after the break. We sure hope he’s living in a building with just two units, otherwise this will drive the rest of the neighbors batty as well!
When surround-sound home theatre systems where new and all the rage, we had one, neighbor had one.
We started becoming upset at how load they palyed their music. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP !!!
We went over there to see, the sound in the room was quiet to average on there side, certainly normal, thump on ours.
We had them come listen on our side.
It was what it was, we agreed to keep the bass turned down.
This smoking little hottie lived next door to me in my bach. days and for some reason when she went away on weekends left her alarm clock to go off playing country, while M-F she was a metal head. Might have been cause she lived alone and didnt want her apartment to sound empty since landlord didnt give her a door key (-???), or maybe she didnt like us. She was certainly loud enough when her boyfriend stopped by (nudge-nudge).
Sometimes when away she just set the alarm clock to ring for an hour.
Ah, to be 19 again.
Some idiots leave their TV or stereo on when they go out to make place sound lived it without considering neighbors might like to a)finally have some total silence to collect their thoughts, and b) be able to hear if someone is trying to break-in in the building.
I say crazy glue their locks.
Won’t fix the problem but, ….
Cool hack, but I feel bad for you. The truth is people who play their music that loud don’t give a sh#t whether they’re music is imposing on your space. Like most Americans, it’s “my needs outweigh the many”. Hope you found a better place to live by now!