Advice: Dog Silencer Modification for enchanced range & intensity

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I work from home, and half of the time I'm on the computer. The neighbor's dogs sound like a fully stocked kennel of twenty dogs barking their heads off. They never stop all day, and the owners respond with nothing but excuses. Animal control does nothing but ask them to build a (useless) privacy fence. Apparantly, It's totally legal for me to install this unit, but I'd like it to have a better range, and if possible - the more intensity, the better - I'd really like to see those dogs get a dose of their own medicine.

I'm looking into buying and upgrading this product:

http://www.ultimatebarkcontrol.com/ds_pro.htm

I want to increase the range and make it multi-directional to treat two adjacent neighbor's yards that are at right angles to each other. I can't find specs that show the frequency range of the ultrasonic drivers, but I am really interested in finding a similar driver and building a satellite speaker to increase covereage of the unit.

Where can I find ultrasonic drivers that may be comparable to the tpe used in this device?
 
I did a "mosquito" style of thing using a velleman amp kit and a PA style super tweeter. It was while reading up on this that I found this forum so thats a plus.

The easiest way to generate the tone for me was to grab a tone generator from the internet and burn a cd of the tone. You could use an MP3 player either I would guess as you are not looking for audiophile sound quality.

Be careful when testing it though, just because you cant hear the sound doesn't mean its not loud enough to damage your ears and definitely NO headphones!
 
What frequency did you use for you mosquito thing?

EDIT: From wikipedia:

Dogs

Dogs can hear sound at higher frequencies than humans can. A dog whistle exploits this by emitting a high frequency sound to call to a dog. Many dog whistles emit sound in the upper audible range, but some, such as the silent whistle, emit ultrasound at a frequency in the range of 18 kHz to 22 kHz.
 
A little observation of dog behavior will tell you that the thing isn't likely to work- i.e. butts stink and I wouldn't stick my nose into one, but dogs do it all the time. You might think that a high pitched squeal would be annoying enough to make a dog stop barking but it is more likely to have the opposite effect.

A dog may hear your ultrasonic screamer but will not have intelligence enough to think that he should shut the F up when he hears it so he will continue to bark at it the same way he barks at people who are walking on the other side of the street.

Dogs are stoopid. Don't count on them to do anything that makes any sense.

I_F
 

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The whole last part of the thread at the link below is about making a high-power amplifier to drive a piezo at 28 kHz (for ultrasonic welding, possibly). It's a complete project, with final PCB layout etc. (Maybe if you email krazatchu, he might give you some pointers about piezos that might work.)

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110890

If that doesn't work, ask some agency other than animal control. Maybe they're breaking some law that doesn't interest animal control.

If any piezo device works at all, maybe then try using a 'bark sensor', and zapping them (with overkill) only when they bark. It might train them not to bark, ever.

If you do eventually use a high-powered amplifier, and it stops them from barking, lower the output power until they stop whining. :)
 
Re: Re: Advice: Dog Silencer Modification for enchanced range & intensity

MikeHunt79 said:
Do you already have one of the units? I'd be tempted to reverse engineer it and make a more powerful version, DIY style...


That's exactly what I want to do - it's why I started this post. I really want to add onto the unit, because it already has the microphone to sense when they are barking - I just want to add range and intensity. More tweeters/watts.
 
Re: Re: Re: Advice: Dog Silencer Modification for enchanced range & intensity

boukisan said:



That's exactly what I want to do - it's why I started this post. I really want to add onto the unit, because it already has the microphone to sense when they are barking - I just want to add range and intensity. More tweeters/watts.

So just find the input connections of the unit's output amplifier and connect (a buffer, if necessary, and) a power amp and some output transducers. Or, add multiple smaller buffer/amp units, each with its own transducer. Or maybe add a unity-gain power buffer to the existing final output, and add more transducers (with series & parallel sets of them, if necessary, to maintain same impedance as seen by amp unit). Or, add multiple smaller unity-gain buffers... You get the idea(s).

Since the signal is probably only just-above the audio range, you could probably do some initial 'proof of concept' testing by using an existing audio power amplifier, with some existing tweeters (or maybe with some piezo transducers, if handy, and compatible). It would probably help to know what frequency you're dealing with, in case it's too high for your amp/tweeter combo to be effective and that makes you think it can't work, when it actually only invalidated the test.

In other words, wait until the neighbors are gone and then take an audio power amp and speakers outside, point the speakers at the dogs from the closest-possible range, grab the signal from the commercial anti-bark unit and run it through your system, and see if the dogs 'react'.

Caution/disclaimer: You would AT LEAST want to make sure that the basic signal level was compatible with your amplifier. You would really need at least a cheap oscilloscope, to do that right. Also, certain 'bad things' might happen to your system. So only do this at your own risk, etc etc. I'd use some cheapo amplifier and speakers, if they're handy, instead of my main system. Actually, I'd probably just throw together a simple non-inverting chipamp-based power amp. One channel at up to 50 Watts is trivial, with chipamps.
 
I used a mic hooked up to a small mixing desk to give a visual indicator for the output. Sadly not before I fried the tweeters in some Technics 3 ways I was using at the time.

You can imagine the scene, cant hear any output so I turned the amp up, still cant hear it so it went up some more. Decided it wasn't working and put the music back on, wheres all the treble gone and whats that strange smell?

I've now got a chipamp running through FR125s that sounds way better than my old setup so I guess thats the silver lining.
 
If messing-with the neighborhood dogs became my hobby, I might consider using a parabolic reflector, which could direct the ultrasound, and keep it focused. That way, you'd need less transmitted power to achieve the same effectiveness, and also might avoid causing as much discomfort for any 'good' dogs in the area.

Of course, THEN I'd probably want to have three or more bark sensors, far-enough apart, and a system that would calculate the location from which the barking originated, which would then automatically point the dish at the target location, transmit the signal, and then cease transmission when/if the barking stopped, or maybe after a predetermined period of time, otherwise. It might also be good to start with a low-power transmission, and use periodically-stepped increases of power until the barking stopped. If the terrain was not level, an additional bark sensor with some vertical separation would probably be needed. However, the system's already knowing resident dogs' expected locations should be able to ease the target-acquisition algorithms' burden, and would probably also enable simplification of the hardware configuration. (Such a system could easily also have the capability of recognizing each individual dog's bark signature, and remembering its expected location.)

Multiple simultaneously-barking dogs might seem to be a problem. On the other hand, that could also be thought of as 'a target-rich environment'. ;-)
 
How about training the neighbors instead of trying to train the dog? Mount a loudspeaker system to blast Wayne Newton music into their bedroom. Set it up so it is triggered by the dog barking and stops when the dog(s) stop. The humans may get the idea and try to control the dogs, but maybe not. I've seen a lot of dog owner's who were every bit as dumb as their animals...

I_F
 
I have thought of blasting them at night with loud music - they deserve it. I can be on the phone in the middle of the day, in the house, and the person on the other end asks why there's so many dogs barking. Seriously. These people think of themselves as 'dog rescuers' and they know exactly what the legal limitations are, and they go right to the edge of them.

It's two people, one is a nurse who is gone all day, the other is a retired guy who happens to be about 80% deaf. He can't hear the dogs, and he doesn't care.

The other neightbor's dogs are fine until my neighbor's kennel gets started - then it starts a chain reaction.

I've heard some of these signals are painful to dogs. (delightful) This device that I have mentioned sweeps through frequencies, audible and inaudible until the dog stops barking - then it stops. It immediately starts again when the dog barks, and so on.

Dogs are pretty smart - at least my (non-barking) dog is pretty smart. According to testimonies, dogs being trreated by this product tend to learn the pattern in a few days, and shut their freaking holes, which is nice, but I want to supercharge it.
 
I_Forgot said:
How about training the neighbors instead of trying to train the dog? Mount a loudspeaker system to blast Wayne Newton music into their bedroom. Set it up so it is triggered by the dog barking and stops when the dog(s) stop. The humans may get the idea and try to control the dogs, but maybe not. I've seen a lot of dog owner's who were every bit as dumb as their animals...

I_F

I've seen some of those types of people, too. And their dogs sometimes have them trained fairly well. :)
 
john blackburn said:
MikeHunt79

The Mosquito emits 16Khz at 16db seemingly, mine emits much more than that! I used http://shmelyoff.nm.ru/ to create the file.

I cant hear it, but a friends 16 year old daughter who was used for blind testing couldn't enter the room it was in. It was only operating on tick over as well.
I guess it could also work as a child and adolescent repeller then. ;)
I_Forgot said:
How about training the neighbors instead of trying to train the dog? Mount a loudspeaker system to blast Wayne Newton music into their bedroom. Set it up so it is triggered by the dog barking and stops when the dog(s) stop. The humans may get the idea and try to control the dogs, but maybe not. I've seen a lot of dog owner's who were every bit as dumb as their animals...

I_F

Even better, have a mic setup, so it plays the dogs barks back to them, perhaps have a 5 second delay or something like that. :clown: Actually that may not be suck a good idea...
 
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