If you’re currently living outside of a Spanish-speaking country, it’s possible you’ve only heard of the music genre Reggaeton in passing, if at all. In places with large Spanish populations, though, it would be more surprising if you hadn’t heard it. It’s so popular especially in the Carribean and Latin America that it’s gotten on the nerves of some, most notably [Roni] whose neighbor might not do anything else but listen to this style of music, which can be heard through the walls. To solve the problem [Roni] is now introducing the Reggaeton-Be-Gone. (Google Translate from Spanish)
Inspired by the TV-B-Gone devices which purported to be able to turn off annoying TVs in bars, restaurants, and other places, this device can listen to music being played in the surrounding area and identify whether or not it is hearing Reggaeton. It does this using machine learning, taking samples of the audio it hears and making decisions based on a trained model. When the software, running on a Raspberry Pi, makes a positive identification of one of these songs, it looks for Bluetooth devices in the area and attempts to communicate with them in a number of ways, hopefully rapidly enough to disrupt their intended connections.
In testing with [Roni]’s neighbor, the device seems to show promise although it doesn’t completely disconnect the speaker from its host, instead only interfering with it enough for the neighbor to change locations. Clearly it merits further testing, and possibly other models trained for people who use Bluetooth speakers when skiing, hiking, or working out. Eventually the code will be posted to this GitHub page, but until then it’s not the only way to interfere with your neighbor’s annoying stereo.
Thanks to [BaldPower] and [Alfredo] for the tips!
Just pointing out that a radio signal jammer of any kind is illegal in the US. Intentionally jamming someone’s Bluetooth signal even by overtaxing it falls under this law. If you get caught doing this, the FCC will make you cry.
Yup, however anti-social the behaviour of the people playing the music is, it’s a targeted DoS attack and could possibly bring the attacker some unpleasant legal ramifications, not to mention the ire of the victim if they ever work it out.
Have fun with the fcc on your toes when they find this out and you live in america. The fcc will deffinitly make you not speak about this by charging you, and nope they wont charge your bt speaker battery but they will charge you a fine!!
Yeah but they’re in Latin America. If you think somebody is going to cause a fuss over this, you’re dreaming.
He really does live in your head rent free.
The inventor is in Argentina and they actually currently have a genuine libertarian leader.
Read the message I responded to.
Of course he lives there rent free. He doesn’t pay for anything he doesn’t have to. Half a billion dollars’ worth of fines may change that, but he’ll still likely get his sycophants to pay instead.
Of course it’s illegal. At the same time, being next door to a party house, I don’t think anyone who’s generating a quality of life issue for the neighborhood is going to petition the FCC. I mean.. why are the rules for illegal broadcasting of electromagnetic waves any different for acoustic waves? I think it’s called a noise complaint, and everyone knows from experience that filing noise complaints is a worthless exercise. Think a federal agency is gonna get involved with a dispute.
Yeah but isn’t that the fun!?
We have no problem’s here in Argentina to worry about but our noisy neighbors!! Heheh
Fighting antisocial behavior with more antisocial behavior… Certainly a lot people thinking that’s perfectly okay these days. What could go wrong?
Although, if Roni can mess with his Reggaeton playing neighbor’s equipment, I guess it would be okay for the neighbor to mess with Roni’s equipment as well.
Also, don’t forget the crack down on dancing grannies:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/speaker-stun-gun-aims-to-combat-chinas-dancing-grannies/
I am with you about the antisocial behavior, but playing Loud music on residential buildings is against the law here. Because authorities are inherently inefficient on this topics, ones doesn’t have other way but self defense against those people. And in the end is lawful to stop a guy who does an illegal activity.
This has nothing to do with noise. The device interferes with ONE particular music genre and avoids interfering with others, regardless of the volume. One might think this just happens to be the music that the maker’s neighbor listens to, but the name of the contraption is far from a coincidence.
Reggaeton is part of the cultural identity of a particular group, which in turn correlates to a social class in a very stratified society. The prejudice against it is nothing but classism and it’s been always the case in Argentina. The same applies to cumbia, cuarteto, etc.
It happens in the US with hip-hop, so if you are from there, just s/reggaeton/hip-hop/g.
There’s no code on the repo, but It seems to be triggered by the reggaeton beat, at which point it issues a DoS of sorts to nearby bluetooth devices.
If 95% of unwanted sounds invading your home match an easily identifiable pattern, then using that to trigger your countermeasures isn’t racist or classist, it’s just good problem solving. I could imagine other noises that would cause false triggers for a simple SPL based solution.
Agreed. It shouldn’t be the genre of music it should be the volume.
I used to live next to tweakers on something, and they would habitually vacuum their apartment at 3:00 in the morning waking me up. This wouldn’t solve issues like that.
That said I enjoy blasting blackened thrash metal & Japanese hip hop loud, but fortunately I live far enough apart from my neighbors that they can’t even hear it anyway.
But you just listed a scenario where a volume based approach wouldn’t work… Someone vacuuming, a garbage truck, etc… there’d be dozens of things that could generate a false trigger in an urban environment.
They’re not building a ‘make reggaeton go away everywhere’ machine (although personally I’d invest heavily in such an endeavor), they’re trying to solve a particular issue with a neighbor who’s music taste is ripe for a pretty simple pattern recognition.
Wouldn’t that be genreist?
Yeah, and it’s just a cowardly, dick move.
“Nothing to do with noise”: isn’t impressive how certain people knows how to peek and read into another guy’s ears, brains and minds?
It’s an article about a device to combat people using obnoxious bluetooth speakers in public… Let’s be honest, there was always going to be a racial angle in the comments section
based
You mean the police?
+1
Do a country-music-begone and take my money.
Before caller ID & with dial phones. there was a student in the dorms that would play his stereo too loud for the rest of us.
We’d call his phone, he’d turn down the music to answer, we’d hang up when he said “Who the F”, he’d finish swearing and not turn the volume up.
Pattern matching is probably too easy to mess up.
There already exists, for a number of years, tools that perform a “Name that tune” look up from a recording.
Start with that, identify the genre or just the artist (man where the hell was this when “Achy Breaky Heart, Livin La Vida Loca, My Name Is Slim Shady came out at the top of every 15 minutes at the beach?)”, then use the return value as the trigger to decide whether or not to squelch.
Way back when MP3 players were new, there was a company called Neuros that had software to do this. Today you have:
https://www.audiotag.info/
Bachata > regaeton anyway for all you Daddy Yankee fans.
Jamming is an FCC violation, FYI.
Finally I’m heard and seen!!! This is effing hilarious!
I’m waiting on the HipHopBeStop. It’s an annoyance on the highway (especially at 4am).
Dont worry … in LatinAmerica … we dont call the police … we take care of issues ourselfs …lol