[TriLUG] [OT] Strange Beep from Back-UPS XS 1200

[Scott Chilcote]

On 01/22/2014 05:37 AM, Peter Neilson wrote:
> The sound from such devices is very frustrating. We can locate sounds
> by using a difference in the delay of a mix of high-pitched
> frequencies as they reflect off the curled channels of the outer ear.
> The usual explanation of location, binaural hearing, is insufficient,
> as it does not explain vertical location. Sound that does not contain
> a mix of high frequencies is difficult to locate.
>
> In the early 1980s the British phone service, which I believe was at
> that time HM's Post Office, introduced new desk phones that used a
> single-frequency beeper instead of mechanical bells. There was a news
> report or comedy on TV showing someone frantically picking up phone
> after phone of the dozen or so in a group of closely arranged desks,
> trying to find out which one was ringing.

Similarly, our house has been haunted by a faint, high pitched alarm for
over two years.  It's the kind that a wrist watch or travel clock makes:
"tink-tink, tink-tink, tink-tink."   It can be heard between 4:30 and 5
am EDT.  We are rarely awake at that hour, but my wife and I have both
heard it.  It lasts about a minute.  If I get up and start looking, the
noise ends.

We've looked at every device we can find that might do it, and made sure
that its alarm was turned off.  No help there.  Someday its button cells
will eke out their last milliamp, and we'll be done.  We hope.

The next thing we have to solve are smoke alarms that go "Eeeep" for one
second every ten minutes when their batteries start to fail.  Whoever
invented that signal was a sadist.  Our house came with five of them.

   Scott C.

-- 
Scott Chilcote
Cary, NC USA
scottchilcote at att.net