Electronic noise management system

All right, got something to show you today which probably won't take that long. It's just something that I spotted on eBay. It was recommended to me under a search and it just intrigued me so I had to pick one up. So, we'll have a look at it together. It's this thing here. It's a current product. This one is an unused example, I think, that has just been resold. Somebody didn't want it, bought it, but you can buy these at the moment. And uh what it is well it's a traffic light system for audio levels. It says on the back here electronic noise management system designed to reduce or help eliminate unwanted noise. So it doesn't do that by any kind of noise cancellation or anything. So, what it's doing, it's listening to the uh audio level in a location. And if it goes above a certain level that you've set, presumably with this remote, the lights will light up. And if red lights up, oh, you're in trouble. U and on the back here, it gives some suggestions as to locations. school classrooms, libraries, nurseries, hospital wards, intensive care units, therapy centers, factory production, office meeting rooms, call centers, libraries, cinemas, theaters. Right. Okay. So, the idea being that if the volume gets too high, this is telling everyone to shut up. Like, oh, it's reach red. Everyone be quiet. Okay. So, how's that going to work in a factory, a call center, or a theater? Yes. Everyone's in the middle of performing on stage at a theater. The red light goes off. Right, everyone. Everyone quieter. It's too noisy in this theater. Yeah. All right. I mean, obviously some of these things have kind of a purpose. I suppose you could put it in a classroom and sort of tell the kids if it goes red, like just try and keep the noise down a bit, but some of these examples are a bit weird. But this is the bit that amused me because Right. Okay. So, it goes red if it goes too high. Right. Fair enough. Another thing you can have it do is play a recorded announcement or set off a siren. Yeah, that's what you want. You want the location to be quiet. So, what you need to do is set off a siren. That'll quiet things down. Okay. Well, I mean, it makes sense to somebody. Um, and uh let's just open it up and have a look and see if it makes any sense to me. Right now, I assume no one's been in here. I suppose I should have checked before I started recording because if that remote's missing, we might have a problem. Let's just have a look. That's the infrared receiver record and mode there. Apparently, it can run off doubleas's as well. Couple of hooks on the back of this. And on this side, on and off, auxiliary out, and uh DC input. We do have a power supply for this. It does look like someone's had a go with this because as you can see it's not all wrapped up, but at least they've included everything. Let's just check this remote's got some batteries in it. H don't think so. I'll have to put some in there. But uh yeah, if we have a look at this. So we set the noise level on this side and we set the volume on that. Presumably that's the volume for the announcements or siren or both. And then got a power button at the top there. Right now, I've had a play around with it and in a way it makes more sense than I thought initially. However, some of the examples it gives don't make any sense at all. If you were to try and use it in those situations, it doesn't really work. Looking at the reviews on the website for this, because you can buy it now, it's around about £200 for a new one. It's mostly people in classrooms that are using this. After all, it comes from a company that seems to specialize in classroom related equipment. And I think it keeps the levels down if people were told to keep quiet. You know, you had a lot of children, you said like, "Get on with something. I'm popping out of the room for a minute and then you have this thing. It'll go off if it gets too noisy. " That kind of thing. All right. But uh some of the examples it gives such as like um call centers and offices and libraries and factory, all that kind of stuff. I was thinking I'd try out in a pub, right? So, I've got my fake pub here now. Yeah. Doesn't look much like one at the moment, but let's just turn this on. It has this uh green light on all the time. Oh, it nearly got me there. Yeah. So, you have to be quite quiet. Let's set it to 70 dibels. Right. So, I've got 70 set on here. So, we're going to pop it there. You can see that, can't you? I've got the volume set to maximum. So, uh let's start our pub off. Sound effects record from the BBC. Don't tell them. Okay. You can see we're kind of borderline. Keep it down. We got to set the alarm off.

Okay, that's a lot of fun, isn't it? Now, one thing you'll notice, let me just uh turn this all the way up so I could be as loud as I want. At the top here, we got a number that counts up how many times the alarm has gone off or it's reached this part where the red light flashes. I'll say all because you can actually turn the alarm off on this side. If I mute the volume down on the alarm to zero and we just set the level dead low here and I'll just to talk into it from the front. You'll see the uh yellow light starts to go up and in a minute the red light flashes. There we go. No alarm. Okay. So, that's one way you can have it keep a quake a place quieter without [clears throat and laughter] setting off a massive alarm. I mean, that's just bizarre to me. Daddy, you want to keep somewhere quiet, so why not set off a big siren, but in addition to the siren, okay, I'll leave the pub going. It adds a bit of atmosphere, literally. Um, we do have the option to play pre-recorded announcements. And you can record four different announcements. We'll just do a simple one here. It beeps once to let you know it's recording, then beeps twice at the end. It allows you six seconds. So, here we go. The volume has been exceeded. There's a speaker here at the bottom. I presume that's where the microphone is. I can't see a mic hole anywhere. — The volume has been exceeded. — Yeah, that'll make your pub fun, won't it? — So, I've already recorded the other announcements. So, announcement number two is — Yeah. Now, that's a little bit noisy. Can you just reduce the volume down a little bit, please? — Announcement number three. — This is the management speaking. You need to reduce the volume. You've exceeded the maximum permissible level. Yeah. So, if I was a teacher, it would be up on the wall and this is the announcement. It would play — for crying out loud. Shut the heck up. You doomed my flipping heading. — And that is why I'm not cut out to be a teacher. Yeah. So, perhaps the most use I can see for this is turning the volume all the way down so you haven't got any sirens or announcements or anything. And then you can just set your decibel level over here. And every time it exceeds a certain amount, you'll get a flashing light at the top. And you'll also get the number counting up and then perhaps later on in the day you could come in and see how many times you've exceeded whatever volume level you've set. But it's certainly not a scientific piece of equipment. It's not the kind of thing that could be used as evidence of a particular place exceeding a volume level. Say you were working for some department that was trying to keep the noise down in say a pub or something. You say, "Right, I'm going to put this on the wall. This has got to be evidence. " Because you could just reach up and press the reset button at the top here to reset your counter at the top. You could switch the thing off if you don't want it working. So yeah, it's more something just for classrooms. I do think it's a little bit odd that they say it could be run from AA batteries because whilst it can, I can't imagine they're going to last very long. There's four AA's powering this light here, which is on all the time. Unless of course the other ones light up. But yeah, it's always got this light on. In addition to that, I should mention if you go past the maximum on the volume, you could choose to have whichever light on you want. If you wanted the amber on all the time or the red, you could have that set and then it goes back around to the bottom again. And there is a little bit of a delay once you've changed the decibel level, which is why you'll have noticed every now and then it I have to wait for it to kick off before this thing starts flashing. Uh it takes a couple of seconds after you've changed the settings before it stays in that mode. But uh yeah, there you go. I don't think that was worth making a video about, was it? It seemed like it was interesting to me and then I got hold of it and I don't think it is now. Um, so sorry about that. You know, sometimes you get something in that surprises you and then other times you get something in that disappoints you and other times it does exactly what it said it would do and you realize that you've perhaps bought the wrong thing. But anyway, that's it for the moment. As always, thanks for watching. to get it in the world.