Electronic Wizz Needed

I am looking for someone to make me an electronic gadget which should basically be

-----> sense dog bark ----> set off alarm ----> dog quiet ----- > alarm stop

(Yes, you guessed right, I have given up on asking the neighbours to keep their dogs quiet, now I will resolve to the teachings of Pavlov, adapted for homo sapiens. I.e. "Oh my gosh, there goes that damn alarm again, I wonder what.... oh the dogs are barking, quiet Fido! My oh my, the alarm stopped" Repeat the above 1000 times and the result should be "My oh my, since Fido has stopped barking at everything, that damn alarm is quiet".)

Anyone want to volunteer?

A good unit will set of the siren at a set decibel, an excellent unit will trigger when it hears THAT dog (see the attachment, remove the .doc bit from the mp3 sound track - play that in an endless loop and you will admire my sanity). And yes, fd stands for what you think it does.

Will renumerate hand$omely



(I am in Cape Town)

You should document the dates, times of day, and length of barking sessions. Document this for at least 2 weeks. Submit this and a complaint form to your local municipalitie's animal/code enforcement department. You can also take videos of them barking. Now you'll have the proof you need to win over them.
I sympathize with your situation... out of control barking dogs are a nuisance. I know, from having lived next door to 3 different neighbors whose dogs bark incessantly. How people can be oblivious to such racket is beyond me. My sister-in-law is an animal enforcement officer and I was forced to document barkings for 30 days before I could even have her dispatched to give them a verbal warning. They would then receive a second warning if it occured again, and the third time they receive a mere $25 fine!!! I lived with it for 2 years from 7am to midnight along with barnyard smell from the dogs rotting poop! These folks couldn't hold down good jobs so they raised pure bred dogs instead and without any permits either!
You can also try building an ultrasonic blaster that is temporarily activated each time they bark. The idea is to annoy them in return without annoying humans. If you have pets, it may backfire on them. Or, you could build a microwave gun from a discarded oven and turn them into hot dogs!

Hey, here in South Africa the police doesn't even have the desire to catch human criminals, leave alone investigate a dog barking. No, I have done the logs and recordings, (city) police here not interested (even though there is a by-law).

Ultrasonic gadget worked for a while, dogs got used to it. So my idea is to irritate the owners into doing something.

Thus my plea on the electronic forum (I do not know a resistor from a transistor!)

gertcoetzee said:

Hey, here in South Africa the police doesn't even have the desire to catch human criminals, leave alone investigate a dog barking. No, I have done the logs and recordings, (city) police here not interested (even though there is a by-law).

Ultrasonic gadget worked for a while, dogs got used to it. So my idea is to irritate the owners into doing something.

Thus my plea on the electronic forum (I do not know a resistor from a transistor!)

Click to expand...

Without your location listed I could only assume you lived in a well governed municipality. And since your electronics knowledge is very limited, building circuits is out of the question. However being in Africa, can you find a hungry, predatory carnivore and loosen it on those dogs. Make it look as if a rogue lion wandered into the area! Is your home in the path of migrating wildebeasts? How about tying a baby elephant to the neighbor's tree and wait for angry Mamma!

I like the replies. I'd help build this for you since I too hate neighbouring barking dogs... but what am I to get in return?

perhaps diamonds!

I will pay! You make your price. Will take some doing getting money to you wherever you are, but can do it via Paypal or such.

can you find a hungry, predatory carnivore and loosen it on those dogs

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Sadly no, but if I had access to such beasts, they will be set loose on the owner, not the dogs.

De$perately $eeking $ilence

Gert

I think what you are going to need to do is record the dog's barking with a high quality recording device that ensures the harmonic frequencies of the dog's barking are recorded with good fidelity.

I think then one of our resident experts might be able to design an audio circuit with filters that selects amplifies distinctive harmonics in the dog's bark with band-pass filters while attenuating other frequencies (as to prevent false triggering of the alarm). I envision an AND gate logic circuit taking the output of two, maybe three amplifiers that are tuned to specific frequencies. When all frequencies of interest reach a peak amplitude the AND gate signals a relay circuit to latch an audible alarm for X-amount of time and reset. (Obviously your annunciator would have to be outside of the range of the input frequencies and located away from the input transducer by a moderate distance).

I believe this works by the same principle as "glass break alarm" sensors in home security systems, where an intruder shatters glass and the sensor is tuned to the frequencies produced when glass is shattered.

Here is a pretty good tutorial on how glass break sensors work:
**broken link removed**

I believe that glass break sensors are frequency and sensitivity tunable. Maybe I can offer a suggestion that is worth your financial offering (hehe).

Go to a security alarm company and purchase a quality glass break sensor that is tunable. Ask them which ones are. Or better yet, you may ask an experienced technician which model or brand of glass break is prone to false triggering by barking dogs. many of these guys deal with troubleshooting false triggers daily.

This brand of device seems to be adjustable and they warn about triggering from noise sources, so possibly more sensitive.
**broken link removed**
You might check it out.

Anyway, wiring one up should be a simple matter, You should get a hard-wire type. It will probably have a contact closure when triggered that can be used to drive your annunciator.

And if you are interested in tinkering, I would think the pass-filtering could be modified on one of these devices.

Hi Gert

I suggest you contact Thomas Scarborough (scarboro@ananzi.co.za). He lives in the Cape Town area and does electronic design for a hobby. You can also google his name for more info. I am sure he will be able to assist you with your needs. He has done a lot of design's for EPE mag. There are also a lot of his design's available on the net. His occupation is actually a minister of a church, but he also has a very good knowladge of electronics. Im sure you will be able to find his name in the local telephone directory as well.

Leon

Gahh, this topic will not die! Someone keeps bringing it up again and again and again. The alarm will do nothing more than antagonize the dog. Sure it'll seem to work for the short term especially if you use a higher power high frequency speaker, and then the dog will promptly ignore it.

My brother bought a toy pistol which goes with a bang! using firecracker material. Aimed it at the dog, and bang! 3x.
I'll spare the details.. but the dog cowers when he sees my bro again the next time he passes by.
Might wanna try to teach the dog the lesson than teaching the owner.

gertcoetzee said:

Hey, here in South Africa the police doesn't even have the desire to catch human criminals, leave alone investigate a dog barking. No, I have done the logs and recordings, (city) police here not interested (even though there is a by-law).
...

Click to expand...

Perfect. No silly govt departments to get in the way of justice and morality. Give the neighbor 3 warnings, each getting slightly more stern to let him know you really want the problem fixed, then just shoot the dog.

Tell the authorities "the dog sounds like it's being abused"?

My daughter's dog shuts up, runs away and hides when a toy animal opens its huge mouth.

Agree that without the cooperation of the neighbor, a good long term solution is nearly nil. Too bad they wouldn't go with a bark collar. Offer to buy the collar, or take up a collection from neighbors, if the owner is amendable.

Like the idea of the toy cap gun, cheap too. Firecrackers work, maybe a couple of blips from an air horn. With some determination, a distance, or bark sensor, could be hooked up to a micro, a servo, and then toy cap gun.

Sceadwian said:

Gahh, this topic will not die! Someone keeps bringing it up again and again and again. The alarm will do nothing more than antagonize the dog. Sure it'll seem to work for the short term especially if you use a higher power high frequency speaker, and then the dog will promptly ignore it.

Click to expand...

Read the thread. The alarm is meant to annoy the dogs' owners, not the dogs.

Whenever the dog wakes you, ring their doorbell (or telephone) and wake them to tell them that the dog sounds like it needs their help.

read all anti-barking suggestions...

...and the winner is...ANNOY THE OWNER IN RETURN. I am a nice nurse who politely requested dog owners in my apartment community to please be aware of neighbors like me who need to get up early in the morning by not letting their dogs stay on the patio all night to bark every single time someone walks by on the main thoroughfare (not to mention constantly for a good 2 minutes afterwards!). When that stopped working a week later, I would yell "QUIET!" and the barking would cease until the next person walked by or if the guilty neighbor brought their dog in. Sick of losing my voice (and not receiving any complaints from them nor other neighbors, who probably got a kick out of it), I filed a complaint in the leasing office, who looked up their apartment # & discovered they didn't report any dogs on their lease (to avoid the $50 extra rent per month and $1,000 deposit...AND to get away with having the illegal pit bull breed). Office said to give it a week after the notice was sent out with their fine to pay up & get rid of their illegal breed; if not then, they would make a second, more severe warning, like an eviction notice. 3 days later nothing changed & I felt like taking matters into my own hands, so I looked up "high frequency speaker test" on an internet video site & played it on my optimal speaker system at the freq I WAS ABLE TO HEAR & GET HEADACHE BY IF I DID'NT PLUG MY EARS. It only took 3 times for the dogs to stop and I finally got the neighbors to pull their dogs in, all on the first night! Let's see how long this will last...if they complain about me, I WAS FIRST to complain about them, and on top of that, if they can let their dogs be against "community compatible" code in our rental contract, then I can return the insult (because mine is only in response and I quit when they do!).