Author Topic: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)  (Read 20430 times)

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Online IanBTopic starter

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Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« on: February 20, 2016, 04:40:18 am »
I found this really entertaining, electronics popping up in an unexpected place, and absolutely justifiable surgery to correct a grievously insulting design:

https://youtu.be/cNZ-w5XYVZ8
 

Offline HAL-42b

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2016, 04:51:03 am »
 

Offline cimmo

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #2 on: February 20, 2016, 05:21:15 am »
A big blob of Blu-Tack jammed into the piezo tweeter's hole is very effective at reducing the volume to tolerable levels whilst still keeping the basic functionality.
And the blob can and probably should be removed if you need to make a warranty claim.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2016, 05:31:31 am by cimmo »
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Offline warp_foo

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #3 on: February 20, 2016, 06:47:22 am »
Where are we going, and why are we in a handbasket?
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2016, 09:39:26 am »
It's not a piezo buzzer. It's a moving iron speaker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_iron_speaker

If it were a piezo buzzer, then it would need to be removed from the board or one of the wires pulled from the disc.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2016, 01:01:09 pm by Hero999 »
 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #5 on: February 20, 2016, 02:34:47 pm »
A big blob of Blu-Tack jammed into the piezo tweeter's hole is very effective at reducing the volume to tolerable levels whilst still keeping the basic functionality.
And the blob can and probably should be removed if you need to make a warranty claim.

I used  piece of electrical tape over the piezo buzzer in my Hakko FX-951.  Went from hugely annoying to barely loud enough to hear.  Peals off just as quick as Blu-Tack.
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Offline Fraser

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #6 on: February 20, 2016, 04:34:35 pm »
Tape over the sounder is usually a good way to make these less anoying. Our Bosch kettle wakes up the whole household when I use it at 2 in the morning..... The cats think it's breakfast time :)

The worst offenders in my house are the UP! Mini 3 D printers.... The beep is very loud on those and they will get the tape treatment.

All our new Bosch kitchen appliances use the same beep ! It can make it fun to work out what wants your attention.... Washing machine, tumble dryer, kettle, oven, microwave or dishwasher...... All use the same sound as an action needed indicator for the user.

Fraser
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Offline gnif

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2016, 02:23:35 am »
I have a rack mount UPS, and normally I can understand the need for a loud piezo in the thing, noisy environment and what not. But at home, when the lights go out, etc, it is pretty obvious that the power is out. And since it is in the garage, my neighbours can hear the BEEEP every 10 seconds, when there is no power. One day I will pull it down and tweak it a fine adjustment tool.
 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2016, 02:26:58 am »
gnif, I feel your pain.  I have 3 APC SmartUPS 1500s here in my office.  it's pretty funny when power goes out.  Even closing the office door to the house doesn't keep the sound from entering the house.  Thank God, Florida Power and Light only seems to fall down during the day when SWMBO isn't home.  She hates the beep.
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Offline wblock

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2016, 04:37:12 am »
There's a button on those APCs to silence the beep.  But I think it can be turned off permanently in software, too.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #10 on: February 21, 2016, 07:25:01 am »
Tape, blob of silicone, blue tak or the crunch method are all things I have used.

Last was an alarm control panel that was beeping due to it failing it's self testing, and a 2 week delay for a new one. Still in there, just loose and rattling around.

BTW why the bleeping kettle? Gas powered one has a whistle, and the electric simply switches itself off anyway. You know the power consumption of that kettle is doubles, simply from the always on power of the electronics. Just like the clock display in a microwave uses more energy over the life of the microwave simply from being on 24/7/365 at 10W or so while the duty cycle of the actual magnetron is around 5 minutes a day.
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #11 on: February 21, 2016, 07:59:55 am »
Tape over the sounder is usually a good way to make these less anoying. Our Bosch kettle wakes up the whole household when I use it at 2 in the morning..... The cats think it's breakfast time :)

The worst offenders in my house are the UP! Mini 3 D printers.... The beep is very loud on those and they will get the tape treatment.

All our new Bosch kitchen appliances use the same beep ! It can make it fun to work out what wants your attention.... Washing machine, tumble dryer, kettle, oven, microwave or dishwasher...... All use the same sound as an action needed indicator for the user.

Fraser

The other great thing  ::) about those damned things is that it can be hard to tell even if you're nearby exactly where it's coming from.  Years ago when I worked at National Semi, we had a set of nitride reactors that used Sonalerts as their alarms.  One of my co-workers could imitate the pitch and pattern of the beeps (one long followed by two shorts, like a Morse code 'D'), and would occasionally amuse us by going in between the machines and randomly 'sounding the alarm'.  I think the funniest was when there was a factory rep there doing training on them.  Kevin began making the noise, and the poor guy was about tearing his hair out trying to figure out which tube was alarming.  IIRC we eventually let him in on it and he had a good laugh too.

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Offline VK5RC

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #12 on: February 21, 2016, 09:26:38 am »
Isn't it just bad design? Going 'beep' or in the old days a soft whistle would tell you the jug has boiled. That to me would be useful but not all the other beeps.
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Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2016, 04:48:31 pm »
I'm not sure there's any excuse for a beep that unpleasant in a consumer product, though.

The old Tektronix TDS5xx and similar 'scopes make a lovely, polite 'ping' when they need attention. It's generated by a simple analogue circuit on the front panel, and the circuit diagram is in the component level service manual that they produced for one particular model.

If I wanted a circuit to make a noise which meant "the kettle has boiled and you're clearly too dumb to work this out for yourself", that's where I'd start.

Offline Muxr

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2016, 04:56:52 pm »
This guy is spot on. Bright blue LEDs and beeping electronics are my biggest pet peeve. I have a set of 4 UPSs in my office. When the power goes out, it's impossible to sit in the office. The beeping is so loud it's like a fire alarm. My dogs also get really afraid because of it. I basically have to open every single one of my UPSs and remove the buzzer from them. Which is a pain.
 

Offline edy

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2016, 06:06:19 pm »
I need to do this for the microwave. At 6am when I need to heat up some food without waking the kids. A simple switch in series with the speaker can let me toggle the sound. And the microwave beeps on every key press and 3 more times when the timer stops (long loud beeps). Very annoying! Then again every minute after if you don't open the door... like I will forget to get my food or not notice that the microwave finished (the fan sound turning off at the end is enough notice I think) !

This thread has inspired me to finally do what I have been meaning to modify for years!  :-/O
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Offline Zero999

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #16 on: February 21, 2016, 08:13:54 pm »
Where I work, there's a loud buzzer on a control panel but it has a volume control, which seems to be added as an after thought when they got annoyed with it.
 

Offline edy

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #17 on: February 21, 2016, 08:43:17 pm »
 :-/O Done!   :-+ 

I will be posting an Instructable on this one for the average Joe. I decided to finally do it today while I had a few minutes. Switch toggles the buzzer so I can decide when I would like silent mode!  :-DD
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Offline dakiller

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #18 on: February 22, 2016, 01:45:35 am »
This is one that is just irritating.

Our microwave, beeps when it has finished, you want it to beep when it has finished, all fine and good.

If you don't open the door, it will beep 3 times again every 2 minutes, forever.  |O
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #19 on: February 22, 2016, 02:29:21 am »
My washing machine plays a little happy song when it's done, but this can be defeated from the controls.  ^-^
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Offline edy

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #20 on: February 22, 2016, 06:07:45 am »
Ok, I finished my Video and Instructable on the microwave hack I did this afternoon. Thanks so much to the OP for creating this thread. I have been putting this off for years... Finally you reminded me to get that stupid microwave under control when I read this thread today.  :-+  The wife is happy!

Here is the Instructable:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Microwave-Beeper-Silencer-Hack

And here is the video:

« Last Edit: February 22, 2016, 06:09:35 am by edy »
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Offline crispy_tofu

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #21 on: February 22, 2016, 06:15:29 am »
Very cool.  :-+
 

Offline SteveyG

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #22 on: February 22, 2016, 08:55:25 am »
gnif, I feel your pain.  I have 3 APC SmartUPS 1500s here in my office.  it's pretty funny when power goes out.  Even closing the office door to the house doesn't keep the sound from entering the house.  Thank God, Florida Power and Light only seems to fall down during the day when SWMBO isn't home.  She hates the beep.

You know you can just disable the beep or change when the beep occurs by changing the options right?
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Offline Halcyon

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #23 on: February 22, 2016, 10:56:51 am »
I have a rack mount UPS, and normally I can understand the need for a loud piezo in the thing, noisy environment and what not. But at home, when the lights go out, etc, it is pretty obvious that the power is out. And since it is in the garage, my neighbours can hear the BEEEP every 10 seconds, when there is no power. One day I will pull it down and tweak it a fine adjustment tool.

It's obviously not an APC? You can silence APC Smart-UPS between the hours of hh:mm and hh:mm (or completely) through software or even via front-panel key combos depending on the model.
 

Offline edy

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Re: Brilliant: how to de-beep your appliances :-)
« Reply #24 on: February 24, 2016, 04:14:18 am »
I received a note on Instructables from someone and was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts about it. It goes like this:

Quote
With a loud beeper, there's usually an inductance (coil) involved and when you just open circuit it, the voltage is bound to rise - in some instances to very high levels (like several hundred volt).

I don't know your µ-wave, or how its beeper circuit is constructed, but just as you'd never crank an engine with a spark plug cable removed (as it can destroy the coil), I'd check the circuitry before this mod and place the switch before the driving transistor.

Perhaps there's no issues, but just to be cautious.

Have a nice day :)


I am trying to figure out why this would be the case.  :-//  Isn't this an issue when you have an inductor already with current passing through it and you abruptly open the circuit, causing a "spark" due to the induced magnetic field in the inductor still generating a current until it breaks down? If the circuit is already open, the inductor never has a chance to build up charge. That is assuming there is one already in the circuit.

You can see the back and front of the board here and clearly it looks like one of the leads of the buzzer connects to the large transformer. The other side of the buzzer appears to head off to a transistor. Here is the back of the board:



Here is the top side (sorry it's at an angle):



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