My parents have a smoke detector which blinks a red LED every ten minutes or so. It’s also placed in the hallway between my room and the toilet. Because that hallway is quite short and a little bit of light still came out of my room, I eventually started just not turning on the lights in the hallway, to kind of preserve the sleepiness.
Well, eventually I walked down that hallway in darkness and was right in front of the smoke detector when it decided to blink, shortly tinting everything around me faintly red. Fucking hell, that spooked me…
That mean the smoke detector need to be tested. Push the button for testing and the light, after, will be a hard green, no flashling.
No my smoke detector had an ‘operational light’. It flashed every 30 seconds or so, so you knew it didn’t have a dead CPU or so.
Not if it is a photoelectric smoke detector, which is the only type you should have unless you got a good reason for ionisation smoke detector.
The blinking is the smoke detector checking for smoke particles.
photoelectric detectors use infrared LEDs. and they are inside the detector, shielded so stray light will not cause any problems.
Any red LED you see on a smoke detector is for statuses, not detecting
Thank you for the correction, you’re right. I got it mixed up with the status LED that some/most(?) smoke detectors have that will periodically blink to show that it’s active.
Regardless, a smoke alarm blinking red is to be expected, and doesn’t mean that it needs to be tested. Most of them will make a loud ping to notify the user that it requires attention, as you can’t expect people to notice the blinking LED alone.
My grandma thought that there was a very intelligent mouse living in her hallway once. It would occasionally do a little squeak at her but never be found. She was a bit cross when she learned the truth about her mousy friend.
I also know of an older couple that was convinced the noise came from an earwig queen(!?!) that lived inside their living room table. Much more concerning story, both if true or false.
I sometimes hear a sound reminiscent of a rodent scratching in my room. Probably pressure shenanigans in the freezer.
Y-yeah haha
You know they call them earwigs because they be doing something to your ears
Given your name, I’m not certain you aren’t an earwig…
Just look at those lobes. Perfect napping spot. I mean hello fellow human
I love these kinds of comments. Either top satire or bottom IQ.
Porque no Los dos
Because one implies ignorance and the other knowingness. One person can’t be both.
?
Sorry bud, you are the bottom in this case
So, one got the reference to the meme and i’m the bottom…
Bless your soul
Btw, i’m not your bud, pal
I’m not your pal, guy
Ok, ntsc.
Well done you totally got it
We used to have a fancy ass fire alarm system in the 90s and early 2000s. At a couple of points in the house there were detectors, each with a battery, power connected and connected to each other. If one of them detected smoke or heat, they would all start beeping. They would flash every 10 secs to let you know it is in sync, but they would also emit a small beep every 10 mins or so. They never ran out of power since they were connected to mains voltage with a battery backup. The battery was rated to be replaced every 10 years, but I think it was one of those that basically went on forever.
I got used to it after a while, but every now and again I would start noticing the beeps and could not stop noticing them. My dad was proud of them, he paid a lot of money to get them and get them installed.
What kind of madman designs something like this?
A fireman who burned down their own house after pulling the battery out because it kept beeping and the only functional detector was in another room and didn’t go off in time. I bet.
I’ve lived in a place with a fire alarm system like that, but the beep is because the backup battery is flat or the unit needs to be replaced.
Most smoke detectors are essentially a small radioactive lump with a Geiger counter next to it; if smoke gets in between it blocks the radiation and if the number of radiation “hits” falls below a threshold in a set time period the alarm goes off. So, as radioactive things have a half life, there’s a point where the radiation emitted falls below the original threshold and you need to replace it. We fucked around with the batteries in ours for ages assuming one of them was low, but eventually replaced the detector itself and the beeping stopped.
Nope these ones did it from the get go. We asked about it when they got installed, it was a feature to let you know they were operating properly. I really to this day don’t know why it was like that.
It wasn’t a loud beep, when the TV was on, you couldn’t even hear it. I only heard it when it was quiet in the house, especially when I wanted to sleep.
Ah yes, the Everything’s Okay Alarm.
I’m going to call all of my friends and family at 3 am to tell them everything is fine and they don’t need to worry, and should go back to bed.
It’s the canary in a coal mine system. Once you no longer hear the beep, RIP
Terribly idea, honestly… Something like that quickly becomes background noise and most of us won’t notice when it stops happening for a while. Better to make a positive alert that there’s a sync issue than a negative alert regularly that all’s well
Sounds maddening!
Mostly I was posting the information above in case someone else has a beeping fire alarm system as it might be like our one and not like yours. I can’t imagine that one took off!
I lived near a highway and it was so weird when you started hearing it randomly and it wouldn’t go away for 10 minutes. Cars going fast are actually insanely loud.
I recently learned that it’s not the engines or whatever that’s loud. It’s the sound of the tires on the pavement that makes the most of the noise (save for some douche that intentionally made their mufflers loud, obvs)
Yes, that’s why the virtual engine noise generator of EVs only runs until 30kph/20mph before turning off. At that speed the tyres are already loud enough to be audible to pedestrians
TIL!
Guys it just does that
Yeah, my basement honks!
*beep*
Idk of this is satire of the meme on 4chan but I recently saw that there’s a meme about black people not changing the battery on their fire alarms. I’m not sure why it was specifically black people though
My job gives me access to lots of people’s homes. It’s kind of true now that I think about it. Not exclusively but certainly more than average.
It doesn’t feel terribly surprising that preventative care for uncommon emergencies would be less common or considered less important in a culture shaped by externally created and enforced poverty
Reminds me of hopping into Mum’s car after several months of not being in it to hear the distinctive grinding metal sound of a bearing on its last legs - asked Mum and my sister when the car started making that noise and got told it always does that…
Ah this was me when I bought my first car… It was super cheap though. But it had just passed the EU control, so I thought it was safe to drive.
Anyway, when I was driving my niece, and her friend, the fucking break disk rusted lose! I drove them fucking carefully to the train, and carefully drove home.
I called my nieces father and confessed, and I asked him how to replace the breaks. He had never done it before, but he’s the kind of guy who reads something once and he remembers it. Anyway I drove to a shop and bought new break disks and pads, and some tools, and drove fucking carefully home.
It took me 3 days to change the breaks, mainly because of the rust, I got a neighbor to help push the break piston back in, as the tool I bought was to weak. To top it of, I have either fibriomyalgia or rheumatism, and my fingers hurt for weeks after, even though it was the middle of the summer.
The back breaks needs to be changed now. But I can’t do it in the winter, I can’t change the breaks in the back when it’s below zero outside. Wife just wants to buy a new (used) car, but our budget, due to needing a 6, 7 or 8 seater, would give us the same age, same length driven car. And we need to cars…
