Things that go beep in the night....

[Sylvia Else]

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

 

[Ricky]

On Monday, June 26, 2023 at 2:25:40 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

Yeah, I hate those beepers. But they are used, because they are the least expensive way to make a sound you will hear. They tend to be frequency restrained as well. If they could simply lower the pitch, they would be ok, but that makes them much less efficient.

Until last week, I had a microwave that was beepless. It had a mechanical timer which rang and actual bell. But it passed away and is no longer a working appliance.

I doubt I will be able to find another.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 26/06/2023 07:25, Sylvia Else wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

I have a particular dislike of the ones in fire alarms that invariably
start going beep every 5 minutes and very loudly at 4 in the morning
when temperature and battery terminal voltage is at its lowest.

Most irritating recent one was our house burglar alarm which started
doing the same thing and then the control panel would helpfully start
beeping to say \"low battery/battery fail\". You could reset it but it
would do the same thing again the next night and again until the service
engineer was able to come and swap the battery (about 2 weeks).

It found itself with heavy acoustic damping foam taped over the front.

I know the system has quite sophisticated anti-tamper features or I
would have swapped it myself (and I haven\'t been able to pinch the
engineering access code).

I\'m not sure why it reacts so badly to backup battery failure - the
battery really only comes into play if the mains supply fails.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 6/25/2023 11:25 PM, Sylvia Else wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

I suspect they need to make *some* sound. If you\'re deaf, your
timer flashes a light in your home.

The more annoying issue is devices that now \"play melodies (?)\"
in lieu of a \"beep\". And, always in a high register.

If you can play music, then why can\'t you let ME decide what
music to play? Do you really think I am going to recognize one odd,
uniquely created tune vs. another in a single device? \"Is that
the song that tells me the oven is up to temperature -- or, that
the timer has expired?\"

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours of the
morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I hadn\'t intended to
put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud?

Likely because it isn\'t really practical to try to control the
sound intensity. (and, what control would you have them add
for this function?

The fan used to beep every time a
setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to make changes
for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might reasonably have
thought it was a smoke alarm.

OTOH, I\'ve recently encountered a fan that lets you extinguish
its indicator LEDs -- handy if used in a darkened bedroom!

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty of
knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual, is another
issue.

The lack of an indication of said mode is even bigger!

> [**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

 

[ABLE1]

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes. Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!! End of my day!!

Hope you enjoyed the read!!! ;-)

Les

 

[Liz Tuddenham]

Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]

If you can play music, then why can\'t you let ME decide what
music to play? Do you really think I am going to recognize one odd,
uniquely created tune vs. another in a single device? \"Is that
the song that tells me the oven is up to temperature

\"Steam heat\" from \"The Pyjama Game\".

-- or, that
the timer has expired?\"

\"Tick-Tock Tango\" played by Ray Martin & his Concert Orchestra.



--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the \".invalid\"s and add \".co.uk\" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:25:31 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

I replaced the thermostat at our cabin with a simple single-knob
analog type and glued down the couple of switches. Guests were always
snarling up the digital one.

Every programmer on the planet, all 900 million of them, reinvents the
user interface. And two buttons do everything.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

When I get a new microwave oven, if I can I open it up and kill the
piezo buzzer. I hardly need five loud beeps to tell me that the thing
has finished warming my coffee.

The wall-mount unit is programmable to not beep, but of course after a
power failure it forgets.

There\'s nothing in my bedroom that can beep. All such have been
trashed or smashed... the ultimate beepectomy.

Piezos are cheap.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:35:34 -0400, ABLE1 <somebody@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.


A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes. Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!! End of my day!!

Hope you enjoyed the read!!! ;-)

Les

Piezo sounds are hard to localize. They bounce all over the room(s).

Maybe people can localize wideband sounds, sort out the echoes,
better. Like wideband radar.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:02:14 -0700) it happened John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
<d16j9i5lsb2ka1hgvrdd0ebi8oe68o5q95@4ax.com>:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:25:31 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid
wrote:

Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

I replaced the thermostat at our cabin with a simple single-knob
analog type and glued down the couple of switches. Guests were always
snarling up the digital one.

Every programmer on the planet, all 900 million of them, reinvents the
user interface. And two buttons do everything.


[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.

When I get a new microwave oven, if I can I open it up and kill the
piezo buzzer. I hardly need five loud beeps to tell me that the thing
has finished warming my coffee.

The wall-mount unit is programmable to not beep, but of course after a
power failure it forgets.

There\'s nothing in my bedroom that can beep. All such have been
trashed or smashed... the ultimate beepectomy.

Piezos are cheap.

These days it is not a big deal to make a design _say_ something and not beep
for examaple for airplanes,
beeps will be ignored in stres situations but
\"Hey dumbo, flaps\" may save lives.

Now that I wrote that, my laptop beeped a few days back because I left it on but unplugged.
I wrote the beeping battery monitor, but it took me a while to find it was the laptop beeping..
Project!

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:07:19 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:35:34 -0400, ABLE1 <somebody@nowhere.com
wrote:

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.


A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes. Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!! End of my day!!

Hope you enjoyed the read!!! ;-)

Les

Piezo sounds are hard to localize. They bounce all over the room(s).

Frequency too high for angle-of-arrival estimation to work.

Maybe people can localize wideband sounds, sort out the echoes,
better. Like wideband radar.

People actually require the wideband. When electronic ringers on
desktop phones first appeared, with pure sinewave ring tones, people
were always being fooled and would answer their own phone in reply to
a phone across the sea-of-desks bay. Turned out that the ear
estimated range by the change in spectrum as a sound travels, higher
frequencies being attenuated by range more than low frequencies.

The old electro-mechanical telephone ringers worked better, because
they had many harmonics, and the two bells in the ringer were at
mutually prime fundamental frequencies, all chosen to be urgent but
not annoying.

Anyway, in modern electronical systems, what will work is to generate
a pulse train (not square wave) at a few hundred Hz (but not a
multiple of 40 or 60 Hz), and feed it to a speaker wideband enough for
multiple harmonics to be heard. People will hear the missing
fundamental, reconstructed from the harmonics, and will be able to
estimate distance to the sounder.

Joe Gwinn

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:56:55 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:07:19 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:35:34 -0400, ABLE1 <somebody@nowhere.com
wrote:

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.


A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes. Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!! End of my day!!

Hope you enjoyed the read!!! ;-)

Les

Piezo sounds are hard to localize. They bounce all over the room(s).

Frequency too high for angle-of-arrival estimation to work.

Maybe people can localize wideband sounds, sort out the echoes,
better. Like wideband radar.

People actually require the wideband. When electronic ringers on
desktop phones first appeared, with pure sinewave ring tones, people
were always being fooled and would answer their own phone in reply to
a phone across the sea-of-desks bay. Turned out that the ear
estimated range by the change in spectrum as a sound travels, higher
frequencies being attenuated by range more than low frequencies.

The old electro-mechanical telephone ringers worked better, because
they had many harmonics, and the two bells in the ringer were at
mutually prime fundamental frequencies, all chosen to be urgent but
not annoying.

I suspect that Bell Labs researched that. I toured Bell Labs when I
was a kid. Super cool. They had a gigantic anechoic chamber that was
spooky, with a springy taut wire floor, felt like a trampoline,
halfway up.

Anyway, in modern electronical systems, what will work is to generate
a pulse train (not square wave) at a few hundred Hz (but not a
multiple of 40 or 60 Hz), and feed it to a speaker wideband enough for
multiple harmonics to be heard. People will hear the missing
fundamental, reconstructed from the harmonics, and will be able to
estimate distance to the sounder.

Joe Gwinn

I think the issue is that a speaker costs more than a surface-mount
piezo.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/26/2023 5:52 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]
If you can play music, then why can\'t you let ME decide what
music to play? Do you really think I am going to recognize one odd,
uniquely created tune vs. another in a single device? \"Is that
the song that tells me the oven is up to temperature

\"Steam heat\" from \"The Pyjama Game\".

-- or, that
the timer has expired?\"

\"Tick-Tock Tango\" played by Ray Martin & his Concert Orchestra.

It\'s a double-edged sword -- you want the user to decide what HE
thinks would be noticeable distinctions (based on whatever criteria
he\'s chosen). Yet, you don\'t want to burden him with having to
create \"ringtones\", audition them, install them, etc.

But, this is only necessitated by the increases in device complexity.

New oven has a general purpose timer. Lets you specify HOURS, *then*
minutes. How the hell often does someone specify an hour or more??
(note that the *cook* timer is a separate beast -- for both ovens!)
when I hear an annunciator, how do I know if the first oven has
timed out? the second? or the general purpose timer? what if two
events occur in short order -- will the first be overwritten by
the second... because you opted to design with a SHARED display?

I\'ve not ye tried to let one timer preempt the \"song\" of an earlier
timer expiration. Can I actually TELL that two timers have expired??

 

[Don Y]

On 6/26/2023 5:35 AM, ABLE1 wrote:

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours of
the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I hadn\'t
intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every time a
setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to make changes
for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might reasonably have
thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty of
knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual, is
another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.


A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes.  Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!!  End of my day!!

Catch 22. You don\'t want a sound that is persistent/of long duration
(cuz it would be annoying).

But, beeps are hard to localize.

I just brought a neighbor home from the hospital. \"What\'s that
beeping sound?\"
- smoke detector/CO detector (low battery)
- kitchen timer
- refrigerator door open
- UPS
- medical instrument
- alarm system (reminding you to disarm)
...

[It\'s not my house so even more challenging to think of what it
MIGHT be]

Emergency vehicles have a similar problem -- which way is it
coming from? So, their sirens now utter bursts of various
frequencies (some even sounding like really loud white noise).

[A fair bit of published research on the subject]

Hope you enjoyed the read!!!  ;-)

Les

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 10:16:37 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:56:55 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net
wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:07:19 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:35:34 -0400, ABLE1 <somebody@nowhere.com
wrote:

On 6/26/2023 2:25 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

Having previously amputated the beeper from a pedestal fan that I\'d
inadvertently put into timer mode, and which woke me in the early hours
of the morning, I\'ve found a humidifier that does the same thing. I
hadn\'t intended to put that into timer mode [*] either.

I\'ve performed a beepectomy[**] on it now, so that won\'t happen again.

And why do these things have to be so loud? The fan used to beep every
time a setting was changed, and was loud enough that I was hesitant to
make changes for fear of waking people sleeping in other rooms who might
reasonably have thought it was a smoke alarm.

Sylvia.

[*] The ease of putting things into unintended modes, and the difficulty
of knowing which mode an appliance is in without reference to a manual,
is another issue.

[**] Spell checker says that isn\'t a word. Well, it should be.


A number of years ago I had a customer call me to report a \"beep\"!!
She could not locate and suspected it was a smoke detector.

Since I am deaf at high frequencies I decided to take my wife along.
The three of of around the house and me up a ladder trying to find
the \"beep\" >>> 60 second delay <<< \"beep\" for 45 minutes. Finally
found out that the Dishwasher Door was OPEN!!! End of my day!!

Hope you enjoyed the read!!! ;-)

Les

Piezo sounds are hard to localize. They bounce all over the room(s).

Frequency too high for angle-of-arrival estimation to work.

Maybe people can localize wideband sounds, sort out the echoes,
better. Like wideband radar.

People actually require the wideband. When electronic ringers on
desktop phones first appeared, with pure sinewave ring tones, people
were always being fooled and would answer their own phone in reply to
a phone across the sea-of-desks bay. Turned out that the ear
estimated range by the change in spectrum as a sound travels, higher
frequencies being attenuated by range more than low frequencies.

The old electro-mechanical telephone ringers worked better, because
they had many harmonics, and the two bells in the ringer were at
mutually prime fundamental frequencies, all chosen to be urgent but
not annoying.

I suspect that Bell Labs researched that. I toured Bell Labs when I
was a kid. Super cool. They had a gigantic anechoic chamber that was
spooky, with a springy taut wire floor, felt like a trampoline,
halfway up.

Yes, it was Bell Labs, in the 1950s if I recall. I read about their
ring-tone design in the BSTJ.

Anyway, in modern electronical systems, what will work is to generate
a pulse train (not square wave) at a few hundred Hz (but not a
multiple of 40 or 60 Hz), and feed it to a speaker wideband enough for
multiple harmonics to be heard. People will hear the missing
fundamental, reconstructed from the harmonics, and will be able to
estimate distance to the sounder.


I think the issue is that a speaker costs more than a surface-mount
piezo.

That\'s exactly it. I have had a lot of trouble with electronic alarm
clocks whose ringer is too high (4 KHz) for me to reliably hear,
especially when asleep. Didn\'t even cause odd dreams.

Turns out that the solution is to buy radio alarm clock, even if you
will never use the radio. Having the radio function forces them to
provide a reasonably good speaker and suitable audio amplifier.

Joe Gwinn

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 13:52:48 +0100, liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:

Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]
If you can play music, then why can\'t you let ME decide what
music to play? Do you really think I am going to recognize one odd,
uniquely created tune vs. another in a single device? \"Is that
the song that tells me the oven is up to temperature

\"Steam heat\" from \"The Pyjama Game\".

What, you\'re one of those people who are a sucker for rom-coms?

So am I.

-- or, that
the timer has expired?\"

\"Tick-Tock Tango\" played by Ray Martin & his Concert Orchestra.

Yikes.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-06-26 09:58, Martin Brown wrote:

On 26/06/2023 07:25, Sylvia Else wrote:
Why do designers think that appliances with timer functions need to go
B*E*E*E*E*P when the time expires?

I have a particular dislike of the ones in fire alarms that invariably
start going beep every 5 minutes and very loudly at 4 in the morning
when temperature and battery terminal voltage is at its lowest.

Most irritating recent one was our house burglar alarm which started
doing the same thing and then the control panel would helpfully start
beeping to say \"low battery/battery fail\". You could reset it but it
would do the same thing again the next night and again until the service
engineer was able to come and swap the battery (about 2 weeks).

It found itself with heavy acoustic damping foam taped over the front.

I know the system has quite sophisticated anti-tamper features or I
would have swapped it myself (and I haven\'t been able to pinch the
engineering access code).

I\'m not sure why it reacts so badly to backup battery failure - the
battery really only comes into play if the mains supply fails.

If a thief intends to enter, he will cut off the mains, then wait a day
before entering.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-06-26 19:24, Don Y wrote:

On 6/26/2023 5:52 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]

New oven has a general purpose timer.  Lets you specify HOURS, *then*
minutes.  How the hell often does someone specify an hour or more??

Chickpeas is three hours. Ok, not the oven. My cooking range timer maxes
at 99 minutes.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-06-26 17:45, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:02:14 -0700) it happened John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote in
d16j9i5lsb2ka1hgvrdd0ebi8oe68o5q95@4ax.com>:

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:25:31 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid
wrote:

There\'s nothing in my bedroom that can beep. All such have been
trashed or smashed... the ultimate beepectomy.

Piezos are cheap.

These days it is not a big deal to make a design _say_ something and not beep
for examaple for airplanes,
beeps will be ignored in stres situations but
\"Hey dumbo, flaps\" may save lives.

Yes, they found that out in some accident reports.

Now that I wrote that, my laptop beeped a few days back because I left it on but unplugged.
I wrote the beeping battery monitor, but it took me a while to find it was the laptop beeping..
Project!

I have some voice messages programmed in my computer scripts. Problem
is, they don\'t always work because the service that should voice it is
down already or not up yet. And then, things change after each version
upgrade.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[John S]

On 6/26/2023 12:24 PM, Don Y wrote:

On 6/26/2023 5:52 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]
If you can play music, then why can\'t you let ME decide what
music to play?  Do you really think I am going to recognize one odd,
uniquely created tune vs. another in a single device?  \"Is that
the song that tells me the oven is up to temperature

\"Steam heat\" from \"The Pyjama Game\".

-- or, that
the timer has expired?\"

\"Tick-Tock Tango\" played by Ray Martin & his Concert Orchestra.

It\'s a double-edged sword -- you want the user to decide what HE
thinks would be noticeable distinctions (based on whatever criteria
he\'s chosen).  Yet, you don\'t want to burden him with having to
create \"ringtones\", audition them, install them, etc.

But, this is only necessitated by the increases in device complexity.

New oven has a general purpose timer.  Lets you specify HOURS, *then*
minutes.  How the hell often does someone specify an hour or more??

You ever cook a turkey? A roast? A roast chicken? A leg of lamb?
Kielbasa and sauerkraut? Baked potato? Slow cooking with a dutch oven?

To mention just a few.

(note that the *cook* timer is a separate beast -- for both ovens!)
when I hear an annunciator, how do I know if the first oven has
timed out?  the second?  or the general purpose timer?  what if two
events occur in short order -- will the first be overwritten by
the second... because you opted to design with a SHARED display?

I\'ve not ye tried to let one timer preempt the \"song\" of an earlier
timer expiration.  Can I actually TELL that two timers have expired??

 

[Don Y]

On 6/26/2023 12:11 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2023-06-26 19:24, Don Y wrote:
On 6/26/2023 5:52 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[...]


New oven has a general purpose timer.  Lets you specify HOURS, *then*
minutes.  How the hell often does someone specify an hour or more??

Chickpeas is three hours. Ok, not the oven. My cooking range timer maxes at 99
minutes.

Only hours and minutes. So, I can\'t bake cookies for 4:30 minutes;
pick 4:00 or 5:00.

And, have to make your \"hours\" choice (and ENTER) before making
your minutes choice (and ENTER). Obviously designed by a programmer
who thinks its wonderful how a single knob and button can solve ALL of
these data entry problems -- poorly!

Solution: buy a 99c egg timer and sit it atop the oven... <frown>