from the bzzzz-low-frequency-harassment-bzzzz dept.
An electric humming vibrator designed to upset neighbors operated for about a month inside New Zealand's tallest apartment tower, sending 25 neighbors "just about insane" before it was discovered and disabled, a resident says.
[...] The device was plugged into the mains and had a metal rod nearly the height of the window and a purple plastic device on the end.
A resident explained a man had installed it in a window cavity, behind a blind, specifically to aggravate his upstairs neighbors for unknown reasons: "The device causes a low vibrating-type hum at about 35-40 cycles per minute at about 80hz. It sounded like a cellphone ringing on vibrate stuck in the wall, but it never stopped and just continued all day, all night."
[...] Ceiling vibrators have a long, height-adjustable rod to run from floor to ceiling and make vibrations or a knocking noise from the head. They can be remote controlled and once switched on, they transmit to upstairs neighbors. Thumpers were said to be invented in China and are sometimes referred to as "noisemaker revenge machines".
[...] "It just about sent 25 residents insane because it took a month for it to be located. Everyone thought it was an electrical or mechanical issue that created a dull, repetitive noise 24 hours a day. I know of residents who couldn't sleep and abandoned parts of their apartments," the resident said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday March 08, @06:08PM (11 children)
This is another one of the many reasons why Apartments aren't as nice as individual homes.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday March 08, @06:15PM (10 children)
Actually, individual homes positively suck compared to a luxury villa in the Hamptons or a megayacht.
I really wonder why everybody doesn't choose quality living over shitty individual houses or appartments...
(Score: 5, Funny) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday March 08, @07:06PM (5 children)
Obviously, because some are too lazy to earn a proper living.
(Score: 5, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 08, @08:23PM (4 children)
Oh, come now, it's not about working hard, we all know people can work 80 hours a week and barely earn basic expenses.
The answer is: just don't be poor. There are whole economic theories and political parties built on that one simple trick!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @08:41PM
Democrats hate this one simple trick!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @09:48PM
It's not just working 80 hr a week, you also need to be "hardcore."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @02:28AM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Thursday March 09, @03:30PM
Oh shoot, I already sent most of my $$$$ to a Nigerian Prince. When he repays me 10X, I'll send you $$$$.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 09, @12:29AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Funny) by bradley13 on Thursday March 09, @08:44AM (1 child)
You sound like a fan of bizarre architecture. I have news for you: it is perfectly possible to build a traditional house effectively and efficiently. I personally do not enjoy looking at other people's bizarre architectural ideas. The people living there are inside - it's everyone else in the neighborhood who has to continually see the outside.
Just as a personal example: I live in a traditional Swiss village that looks something like this [wallpaperaccess.com]. For a brief period of time, the building commission was approving anything that crossed their desk. So one of our neighbors lives in a house kind of like this [pinimg.com], and another kind of like this [stuff.co.nz].
No, just no...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 10, @03:44PM
> I personally do not enjoy looking at other people's bizarre architectural ideas.
Do you dislike that so much that you approve of ordinances and laws against it? Lot of people do, it seems. Go even further with these Home Owner Associations that presume to dictate even such petty things as the color of the flowers you may have in your garden. So much for it being a free country.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday March 10, @03:34PM
I wasn't touching on the issue that lots of people are stuck in apartments and outside of winning the lottery, will never be able to own their own home. Thankfully, I've not needed to live in apartments much in my life. I've lived in an RV, an apartment, a duplex, and multiple houses. The Duplex is by far the best "shared" dwelling experience by far. You only have to worry about one (hopefully considerate) neighbor that is directly next to you. It's even preferred over some of the cookie cutter neighborhoods that I've seen. You know, the kind that are "separate houses", but you can touch both when you stand between them and reach. You and your closest 20 neighbors are less than a block from each other. I might prefer apartment living to that mess. Once upon a time, I was told that I lived in a drawer, but I don't remember that and that may have been a mobile home, too. Anyway, it sucks to "not have options". Which isn't exactly true, but sometimes your "best option" is the dump you're currently living in. 'cause it can always get worse (your mileage may vary). I could dream of living in a luxury villa in the Hamptons. (It's not always what it's cracked up to be: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/18/that-summer-grey-gardens-documentary [theguardian.com] ) Except I really wouldn't want to live in New York.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Ewing_Bouvier_Beale [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday March 08, @06:10PM (3 children)
Either that or the tenant was a homesick Fremen.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @06:34PM (2 children)
Oblig. XKCD: https://xkcd.com/316/ [xkcd.com]
(there are some more as well, didn't find those...)
(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Thursday March 09, @01:19AM (1 child)
Also: this [xkcd.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @01:41PM
read the mouseover comments on that second one
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Wednesday March 08, @07:59PM (16 children)
I've been having problems with a downstairs neighbor doing something like this.
It has been surprisingly difficult just getting people to believe that such a thing is even possible. Yet, here is a commercial product that anyone can buy.
There are no laws against this sort of thing - ordinances and such only deal with decibel levels of audible sound.
There is no readily available reliable way to measure and report infrasonic low frequency vibrations.
Some victims may not even understand what is happening to them. This makes it a particularly insidious way of harassing people.
I've read that drug dealers sometimes use this sort of tactic to run off potentially unfriendly neighbors and let their buddies move in.
Long term exposure to intense low frequencies can cause all kinds of problems.
Specific frequencies/harmonics can cause dizziness, pain, lack of sleep, loss of focus, or even unwanted... stimulation.
TFA suggests the perpetrator was being rather brain-dead about what kinds of vibrations it was putting off. There is no reason those things can't mimic other kinds of vibrations, such as exaggerating existing mechanical vibrations or traffic rumbling, or ramp up/down rather than on-off. Such vibrations only need to be "infrasonic", that is below the frequencies that most people can hear.
When this happens, it is very hard to prove. Just going by feel it is not really possible to tell where the vibrations are centered - if indeed there is only one center. Try and measure or record it, and the neighbor may hear you doing that and change things up or turn on a microphone jammer.
Beyond health problems, it can rip up a building too. Since that downstairs neighbor moved in and started this crap, the beams in this building are constantly snapping and popping.
Bizarre thing is that it seems as if these strong low frequency vibrations can actually carry smaller sounds, making things like footsteps seem stronger than if everything else was still.
It is maddening, and it has taken a huge chunk out of me.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday March 08, @08:33PM (1 child)
How long has this stuff existed? Was it around in 2011?
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday March 09, @04:55AM
How long has this stuff existed? Was it around in 2011?
Well one of the first, perhaps the first such oscillator was tested at scale in 1898 [forbes.com] with smaller version a few years before that. Basically if you can hit the resonant frequency of a building you will bring it down, but only if the structure has a resonant frequency. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge [wa.gov] was a famous instance, with the wind being able to hit the resonant frequency.
Newer buildings and bridges are usually designed to avoid such an Achilles heel or have one which changes as the shape oscillates, which was probably missed in the Myth Busters epsiode on the topic. I dunno, did not see that episode. Bad design can still cause structures to collapse whether under load [heraldscotland.com] or even under its own weight [interestingengineering.com].
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 08, @08:50PM (3 children)
They're baaaaack [wikipedia.org].
Sorry, but be aware that you risk sounding like a unabomber [wikipedia.org] wanna-be paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist... and that's on the lighter side of things people may think of you.
And, it is all too possible / easy to buy or make such devices and easy to deploy them in shared structures including offices, apartment buildings, shops, etc.
In our private home on an acre of land, we have neighbors who breed Corgis [wikipedia.org] and delight in whipping them into a barking frenzy several times a day. I can hear them clearly from my office through the closed windows with the A/C on. When they go away on a trip and have a house/dog sitter, we never hear the slightest noise from the dogs, even as the sitter parades them around the field by our fence. Local ordinances can impose fines on dogs which are let to bark continuously for 20 minutes or more, I have timed them at 19 minutes on several occasions. Anyway... all but the oldest Corgi seems to respond to ultrasound chirps, so I have deployed a couple of Raspberry Pi Picos in the yard connected to ultrasonic capable speakers and little 5v amplifiers to drive them, I can trigger various noises from any computer or phone in our WiFi coverage. The dogs still bark, but more often on the opposite side of the neighbors' house now, and they also seem to stop faster when the sounds are playing.
Differences between the "dog influencer" and infrasonics in your apartment are many: 1) "dog influencer" is manually triggered, only in response to annoying barking, often 6-7 times a day, but never arbitrarily. 2) No human has ever complained about hearing the ultrasonics. 3) Wildlife, like birds, seem mostly unaffected, though a party of raucous crows did disperse immediately in response to the sounds starting. 4) My devices are "hidden in plain sight" on posts in the yard.
Seems like a devoted project to detect and localize the source of your infrasonics should be entirely possible, if time consuming, to construct. The transducers won't be common audio microphones, but they also shouldn't need to be hand built there's doubtless something useful on the market, somewhere. Once you can detect/isolate the sound, you could make an actuator of your own that might send out a cancellation counter-signal from near one of your detectors. From that point, you should be able to get a direction - the cancellation should remain perfect in the direction away from the source, but start to "beat" in the direction of the source, of course reflections and conductions complicate matters considerably... On the other hand "Havana Syndrome" seems to still be mostly un-explained here years after first awareness and you would think they had "good people" working on it...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Wednesday March 08, @09:13PM (2 children)
Yea, I've already discovered that the hard way.
Even though these things are very real, the TV has programmed people to mentally put this sort of thing in such category.
It also doesn't help trying to explain things after going multiple days without sleep.
Even trying to demonstrate the issue first hand to someone is problematic. Either the neighbor shuts things off and quiets down when someone else comes over, or the other person can't feel the vibrations because they haven't been exposed to them for months on end.
Which reminds me, even additional floor coverings don't help much, low frequencies just go right through them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @12:10AM (1 child)
How is your building wired? If it was me, I'd look in the basement for their electric feed. Next time the shaker comes on, take a walk down there and flip off their breaker, or pull their meter, then exit stage left for a bit. Use a rag/glove just in case someone gets serious enough to look for a fingerprint...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @12:18AM
Replying to myself. A somewhat similar situation where I used to live, next to an old folks home. On our end of the building (opposite the main entrance) was a side door with covered "porch" area where the workers came out to smoke. Someone had the bright idea to hang a PA horn speaker out there, connected to the main "all call" system inside the building. After being woken up a few times, I took a walk over there when no one was outside. With a stick it was quick and easy to knock the wire off that damn speaker.
It took a few times, but they eventually didn't bother to reconnect it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @01:54AM
Googling around, looks like your smart phone can be turned into a viable infrasound detector. I vouch not for the apps I uncovered. Even if such an app can't accurately report how loud the sounds are, it can tell you where they are the loudest and give you some idea how they're getting into your residence. You may just have a malfunctioning HVAC unit or something rather than hostile enemy action.
I have recently worked in an office with walk-in coolers above it. Those would generate all kinds of interesting noises (including plenty of infrasound) as they spun up and down. At times, it sounded like a distant prop plane starting up. It used to be much worse when the office was first constructed since they hadn't put in a noise absorption layer at the time. That got fixed.
If that happens, then you have evidence that it's your neighbor instead of faulty equipment. An AC isn't going to care that you're trying to locate the source of the sound.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday March 09, @05:47AM (2 children)
Most SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meters [wikipedia.org] are "A weighted" [wikipedia.org]. That means they "hear" like an average human ear. That and more came out of Fletcher-Munson work in the 1920s and 1930s. [wikipedia.org]
There are other "weightings" as explained in the above Wikipedia links.
Some SPL meters (like mine) have a switch to select "A" or "C" frequency response. "C" (or "Z") means fairly flat across human hearing range.
"G" is infrasonic: 8 to 40 Hz.
Most SPL meters use an electret microphone [wikipedia.org]. Some (most) electrets will respond down to near zero Hz, although the specs may not reveal that. Important that the electret mic is omni, not cardioid (directional).
Most SPL studies have centered around intelligibility (clarity), and hearing damage, hence the "A" weighting. Few have been done regarding infrasonics, which won't hurt the ear, but it's known that too much very low frequency energy in a concert or theater can cause people to feel very ill, if not vomit. It's a bit like motion / seasickness.
Point is, you can measure infrasonic ("G"-weighted) energy, but how to determine what is okay is not well defined.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday March 09, @11:50AM (1 child)
Do you remember Bob Widlar's Hassler circuit he built to annoy a loud boss at National Semiconductor?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bob+widlar+hassler [duckduckgo.com]
I have wanted to build one for noisy children in restaurants.
This thing just listens until something loud is heard. It doubles the frequency, shifts it, then emits it. Apparently, it causes some really annoying sensation to the one emitting the original audio when the wavefronts of the vocal tract and the Hassler mix inside the vocalist's head at the eardrum.
Confusion and disorientation result as the victim of this prank can't isolate what's going on, as it's only present while the prankee is speaking loudly.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday March 09, @04:16PM
No, I hadn't heard of that at all, but I've often envisioned something similar- modulating an ultrasonic, well, very upper hearing range, for above purposes.
From the search link you provided it looks like nobody has the actual Widlar circuit. Some of the ones people have done look pretty kludgy, but I'll admit as a sometimes analog EE, there are a whole lot of ways to get the job done. I might have used a 555 for many reasons.
I don't like the one with DC on the speaker. It might sort of work, but a proper ultrasonic transducer won't involve a coil and magnet. Output drive should be a pair of complimentary / quasi-complimentary transistors coupled by DC-blocking capacitor into a piezoelectric tweeter. Most of them claim to produce up to 28KHz, some up to 40.
Be careful- their impedance can go way down at upper frequencies, so put a low-value resistor in series to limit the current (so you don't fry output transistors, or piezo itself).
Ultrasonic sound is very directional, so some kind of reflector, and/or proper narrow-dispersion horn would be ideal. You might be obvious pointing it at someone, and be careful of anyone near. Even if they can't hear the sound, the energy could cause hearing damage. Of course you hope the target can hear it, or would at least have a disturbing sensation. I used to be able to hear very high frequencies, but it was more of a sensation, not a discernible tone.
Of course ultrasonic sound is very easily damped by pretty much any material, including air, so this won't work over long distances unless you use a very large amplifier and very large transducer. Nor would it work through walls or floors.
Now I'm envisioning a dual circuit where you'd have at least two oscillators which would create acoustical heterodyne in the person's noggin. Also, make the oscillators sweep up and down as an ultrasonic siren, and modulate the frequency range and sweeping rate by the incoming noise. It'd be interesting just to see if it works, and see what the reaction is.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday March 09, @05:52AM (2 children)
Subwoofer? Is it possible downstairs neighbor is using a subwoofer, but with earbuds, so you only hear the thudding?
Maybe he's using that and/or floor shakers- actuators which are somehow coupled to the floor and give that sub-sub dubba dubba.
Have you tried to ask about it?
If he's not friendly / helpful, you might put some dead fish / other seafood on his engine or under his car seat or up under his car somewhere. Just a thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @03:42PM (1 child)
> you might put some dead fish / other seafood on his engine
Nice one, but my guess is that it won't work on an electric car. So some other source of "reek" will be needed in the future.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @05:22PM
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Thursday March 09, @07:01PM
Are you sure it is not just an air conditioner, refrigerator or some other machinery running with no intent of malice by the neighbor?
If you are in a 'neighbor war' curious as to how it started. Whenever interacting with neighbors you have to be excessively courteous to avoid just these kinds of wars. You can try to make peace but I've seen some of these wars only ending when one party moves out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @02:08AM (1 child)
Not saying the sounds are not bothersome but it might not even be intentional harassment.
I've noticed coffee sometimes making me more sensitive to such stuff. Thought I was imagining things but then when I went closer the sound was really there.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday March 10, @08:02PM
Whatever it is is running almost 24-7. So not a washer or dryer. Plus, those make rather distinct sounds and vibrations when they are running. They can switch it on and off, though. I have a bit of poof that this person knows damn well what they are doing with these low frequencies, but it probably would not convince anyone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday March 08, @08:26PM (2 children)
Does anyone know how long these devices have existed? I think something similar to this may have been used in a place I lived about 12 years ago.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday March 08, @09:33PM (1 child)
They have probably been around for quite a while, but keep in mind there are multiple ways to do this same sort of thing. Even a simple speaker mounted directly in to a wall can send low frequency vibrations all over the place. Utility room type machinery can put off lots of vibrations, so if intentionally run constantly and/or modified to increase vibrations even that can be a problem.
Logically, these sorts of contraptions have likely become more sophisticated in the last 12+ years. TFA mentions remote control, and embedded computer control would mean a wider variety of functionality such as AI generated varying non-repetitive noise pattens (there are already privacy tools that do this), perhaps even responding to motions or sounds of the victim.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @01:04AM
In the 90s, for an entirely different purpose, we purchased and used a couple of linear motors. 6" of travel, I believe 25lbs maximum force, the amplifier to drive it was as expensive as the motor itself, something like $10k for the set IIRC.
One of the applications those are used for is testing large buildings for resonant frequencies. They might attach a 50 to 100lb reaction mass to the motor then drive it on a frequency sweep from sub 1hz up to maybe 60Hz, measuring response in other parts of the structure to see if any peaks appear in the response amplitude.
It's not a cheap way to shake a building, but it gives you basically total control over the excitation waveform (sine triangle etc.) and frequency: constant, oscillating, steps, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @08:47PM
In rent controlled areas landlords have an incentive to have high turnover in their units, becuase it allows them to increase the rent above and beyond the city mandated maximum. Having lived in one of these, and experienced the negative motivation of landlords to satisfy their clients, I can see the installation of these becoming another tool to drive turnover.
Goes along with the rest of the psychiatric disorder we call normal that isn't satisfied with nicer things and more pay but also has to downgrade the experience of others to demonstrate their superiority even more. *sigh* poor fools
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @08:58PM (1 child)
I admit that this story took an unexpected turn. It is not what first came to mind when I read the headline.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday March 08, @10:35PM
Perhaps the Beach Boys could do a B-side of 'Bad Vibrations'
(Score: 4, Funny) by ilsa on Thursday March 09, @12:31AM (4 children)
That's terrible! Horrible! What is the name of this product and where can I buy it? You know, just so I can avoid it...
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday March 09, @05:10AM
You can probably build one. The patent expired long ago, if rumor has it correct that it is described in a patent from 1893. The scan of patent US 0517900 A, from 1894-04-10, seems to refer to it. But the scan of the actual relevant patent is not there or at least not properly indexed.
Sadly, the increasingly incompetent and seemingly malicious USPTO got rid of its web pages a while ago and run only a clunky, slow "web app [uspto.gov]" in their place, making it impossible to link to that document directly.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @05:17AM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday March 09, @05:59AM (1 child)
Purely for scientific informational learning purposes, of course: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/the-zhenlouqi-floor-shaker-the-chinese-noise-machine-to-take-revenge-on-your-noisy-upstairs-neighbors/ [whatsonweibo.com]
Also you could use these, I mean, avoid these: https://www.amazon.com/SoundShaker-Tactile-Transducer-Theater-Vibration/dp/B01C9K0Q6G?th=1 [amazon.com]
Or these: https://www.frightprops.com/frightprops-transducer-shaker-0527.html [frightprops.com]
to also be avoided, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @01:57PM
That https://www.whatsonweibo.com/anti-square-dancing-device-goes-viral-on-chinese-social-media/ [whatsonweibo.com] looks awesome! Must get!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @02:41PM (1 child)
They have speakers mounted at the back of the room playing the radio 24/7. The speakers are pointed out of the house straight at me. Only closing the windows helps, but during nights when you want some fresh air but not to listen to music at 3am it sucks. They turn the sound down at night, usually, so you can just hear it whispering then squark and squeek as radio does and then whisper for a while. All night.
The speakers are line of sight 25 meters away.
Two years now. Two. Years,
It is enough to drive you bonkers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11, @05:30AM
Time to fight fire with fire.