I'm an engineer. It bugs me that I have roughly sixteen things (maybe twenty or thirty or a hundred things) in my house that beep sometimes. They all beep the same way. Pretty much the same pitch and same sequence. I get woken at night because I hear beeping, indicating that something somewhere is wrong, but I can't tell what! I crawl out of bed and stand in the middle of the living room in the dark, hearing beeps, wondering what's beeping and why. Is it the smoke detector? Is it the alarm system? Is it the laundry machine? Is it the oven? Is it the new wi-fi thing we got just as an experiment? As an engineer, I would program these things to say, "Hi! I'm your smoke detector! I'm the one that's beeping!" or something else helpful. If it's just beeping, and everything else in the house has the same beep tone, I can't tell what's wrong, if anything! /rant
In my apartment, we have five smoke detectors. One downstairs, then one in each bedroom upstairs and the hallway connecting them. The other night while we were cooking, one of them went off upstairs. Then a second one upstairs went off. There was no smoke, so we couldn't figure out why they were going off. By the time we tried to figure out which ones were going off, they stopped. We went about our cooking. Then they went off again including the one downstairs. So we pulled everything off the stove just in case there was smoke that we couldn't see or smell somehow and went from room to room checking everything. No signs of smoke. So we thought maybe the batteries were just going dead. One went off while we were upstairs, so we pulled the battery out. We thought everything was fine so we went back to cooking. Then it went off again. So we had to figure out which one was going off and pull THAT battery out too. Still haven't put them back up. But we still have three more, two of them within five feet of each other. So we're not worried. So annoying though. lol
Gadgets and appliances that identify themselves is an ingenious idea! I shall make a note of this and steal it for any futuristic story ideas that come my way.
My personal moment of commiseration in this dynamic is when I forget to mute Messenger on my phone and my friends all live in VASTLY different time zones. .........
So my microwave does what it's meant to: heat stuff. Except. Once it's finished, 1. the fan continues 2. the rotisserie continues 3. it beeps at me, every 30 seconds. I realise I am anthropomorphising the beeps, but they are insistent demands for my attention. It is the first microwave that I have ever owned that does it. I want to hit the product manager who allowed this design in the face. With the microwave. Machines should do what I tell them, then shut the hell up and wait until I am good and ready to attend to their output. /rant In your scenario, turning on the PC tablet next to your bed, pulling up the list of current device warnings, seeing what it is, hitting reset and going back to sleep seems the best solution. The warnings list would include warning type, a link to remedies, another link to an online forum discussing the warning and its ramifications, a reorder button if it needs to be replaced, and an "add to shopping list" button if it requires batteries or other consumables to be purchased during your next groceries trip. I wear ear plugs. Nothing wakes me. In general, I want to hit things that beep with a hammer until they stop.
I recently changed my alarm to be the Lavos scream from Chrono Trigger: I feel it's an accurate reflection of how I feel in the morning. Anyway, in general, I agree; we can get way more creative than just beeps.
Deaf people would often have flashing alarms that go off when there's smoke/fire. They're really hard to miss, the sharp pinging light that pulsate. You could consider getting one of those, even though you're not really deaf.
The smoke detector in my house always seems to go off whenever I make something in the kitchen. Even once went off when I made myself a cup of coffee, is that normal?
Smoke detectors are a pain in the ass. If you ever want to broil anything, you have to turn off the smoke detector. They should be on the same switch, as far as I'm concerned - turning on the broiler turns off the smoke detector. Problem solved.
We have a clothes dryer that I swear is possessed. The thing will beep constantly for no reason that can be figured out. even when turned off it will turn itself back on, I have to unplug it to keep it from being on all of the time... that I can handle but if it plugs itself back in and continues to beep I am going take my boomstick after it.... right after I take notes to write about it...
There's a short story in here. Plot twist at the end; it's a camera in the wall. You're a test subject for it a person will A. Spend hours looking for a noise that causes little to no harm B. Do your taxes. You never did you taxes.
Drives by @minstrel 's house. BEEP BEEP! And gone, off into the grand unknown. Or possibly buried in the back yard growing begonias, cause he really doesn't like beeping. I am sorry your little electronic devices beep at you, that has to be quite grating on the nerves after a while. Tell them if they don't stop now, I will EMP their butts and they will beep no more.
