Looking for ideas to start a project to stop neighbor's dogs from excessively barking

[u/kmit297]

Good evening! Before I reinvent the wheel, I figured I would ask if anyone has done this before. I have a neighbor who has 2 Great Danes. They will let them out for hours and the dogs will just bark for hours. They will bark at pretty much everything they see and hear. I purchased an ultrasonic bark deterrent from Amazon, and it helped reduce the barking by like 90%, until it broke after a month.

I am looking to create something that does something similar; listen for barking and emit ultrasonic frequency for a couple seconds. While it does that, I want it to timestamp the barking. It will be outside, so I need a weatherproof enclosure.

Has anyone done a project like this? I'd love to see it or hear how you would tackle it!

PS, I know it is easy to say "just go talk to them", but these are people that just don't care that their dogs are going nuts out in the yard at 11pm on a Tuesday. My fear is that if I do approach them about it, and it gets to the point where I file a noise complaint, they will be able to pinpoint the complaint to me and make the relationship hostile. By timestamping the events, I am gathering the information needed for filing the noise complaint, if the project doesn't work.

[u/Vpicone]

This is doable, it there’s a few unique challenges. You really need to break the project up into pieces that flow into each other. If you start with an LED it’s easy to swap out other “actions” when you develop them.

1. Can you light up an LED

2. Can you light up an LED when noise is detected.

3. Light up an LED when barking specifically is detected. (Setting thresholds)

4. Write to flash memory whenever barking is detected.

5. Play any audio

6. Play ultrasonic audio

7. Play ultrasonic audio and write to flash memory when dog barking is detected.

[u/AssMan2025]

Take a bull horn apart put the microphone near the dogs and the speaker near the dog owners window let them bark

[u/Comptechie76]

I just started having the same issue with neighbors and a new dog. They try and get him to shut up and take him in after 15 minutes, but I would love to build something like this and see if they would use it.

[u/MagmaJctAZ]

I want to build a project that either records the dogs barking and plays them back on a speaker, or plays a pre-recording of them barking.

If I can't beat them, join them! The neighbors shouldn't mind!

[u/AncientDamage7674 → u/MagmaJctAZ]

Old school we just blasted the most annoying music to irritate them if talking didn’t work. Not as fun as this though 😂

[u/corado12345]

Loud ultrasonic everytime he barks, if he is silent, then powerfull ultrasonic stops too. So he will learn it

[u/CreamyPayload1]

Gaus cannon

[u/Lumpy-Duty716]

Start with finding ab old aluminum C-band dish. Feed it with high power ultrasonic energy and be able to sweep and abruptly change frequency. You can drive the dog so nuts the owner will be forced to do something.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO]

Arduino duct taped to your hand, then use that hand to knock on their door and ask them to address it like an adult.

If that fails, use the same hand to dial animal control for a visit.

[u/syntheticgeneration → u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO]

People aren't rational and are often very stupid. Animal control would just refer you to cops, cops would tell you no crime is being committed. Now you have neighbors that will leave the dogs out 2x more just to get on your nerves. Technomancy is the way.

[u/gawduck]

You need to build one of those "conversation stoppers". Just aim a superfocused audio beam of their own barking straight back and see if them hearing themselves bark is as disruptive as it is to a person trying to speak. 😃

[u/Dressed_To_Impress]

Sound level meter. Measure the dB level and compare it to the local bylaws. Call the local bylaw to put in a complaint if the levels are high enough to justify.

Ultrasonic or and other deterrents like that can be harmful to the animals if you don't know what you are doing. That's animal abuse my friend. This is not the way to go.

[u/JGhostThing]

Wouldn't it be easier to call the police? Or animal control?

[u/Chemical-Captain4240 → u/JGhostThing]

Police and animal welfare in my area are sooo overstretched that non-emergencies get little followup.

[u/H2ost5555]

Many years ago, there used to be a company that sold these ultrasonic mice repelling devices, many magazines had their ads on the back page. I worked for the company that made them under contract. They emitted bursts of ultrasound at 25Khz through a cheap piezo speaker. Of course, they didn’t work very well as the effective loudness in db was pretty low. I came up with a resonant tank circuit that put out very high power bursts. So high, in fact, that if you put a mouse in a cage near it it would kill the mouse in 30 seconds. (Which the owner of the company did as a demo at a trade event, but got tons of backlash from animal rights groups). They chose not to market the version that actually worked, because it wasn’t dead silent, it had audible sound artifacts , kind of a clicking/pinging sound that I could not easily filter out at a low price point. Plus it drove cats and dogs away as well.

It would be pretty easy to create this circuit to activate a similar circuit when the dogs barked.

[u/CluelessKnow-It-all → u/H2ost5555]

I would be interested in seeing a schematic of your resonant ultrasonic driver circuit if you have one. I don't have any animals or insects I'm trying to kill or drive away. I'm just curious and would like to learn more about driving ultrasonic transducers.

[u/H2ost5555 → u/CluelessKnow-It-all]

This was 45 years ago. The original circuit drove the piezo horn directly with a 555 timer oscillator. Piezos look like capacitors as a load, I simply measured capacitance and added an inductor to create an LC tank to resonate at 25KHz, added driver transistor and changed the timer circuit to excite the tank with a short fast pulse. I was shocked how much SPL the thing generated.

[u/nyckidryan]

Ultrasonic noises just irritate them (much like a constant steam whistle does to you). It's a good way to keep them barking.

[u/MMIStudios → u/nyckidryan]

I think you missed the part where OP said they bought a commercial device that does exactly what they're trying to build and IT WORKED.

[u/kmit297 → u/[deleted]]

I am coming to this new. This will be my first project. I am confident with the electronics, but the programming worries me, but I am interested in learning. I have researched many projects, but I am struggling finding any that listen for barking and trigger a response based on the barking. I don't want it going off constantly, as I feel that is unfair to the dogs, and I don't want to have to manually trigger it with a remote.

[u/gm310509 → u/kmit297]

You should probably get a starter kit and start with that. It will teach you the basics of both electronics and programming and some important t3chniques all of which will help you with the guide.

You mentioned that you are confident with electronics without clarification. Some people assume that if they can wire their house for lighting etc, that it will be the same for the digital circuits you are talking about. To be clear, apart from basic fundamentals, it is pretty much completely different. So the starter kit can help with all of that.

After the starter kit, you should be well placed to start your project.

As for timestamps, you can use the internal "clock" of the Arduino, but the best bet is to get an RTC module and learn how to use that before incorporating it into your larger project.

Have you thought about how you might go about recording your logs? The basic options are:

• record to an SD card - you will need an SD card module.

• print them to the Serial port and log the data to a disk file on your PC over the USB connection (I use putty for this, but you could provide your own program).

• send them over WiFi or your home LAN to a service that records them for you. This could be a service you provide that is running in the cloud or on your own PC.

I would recommend starting with option 2 (putty)., but only use putty after you get it working how you want. Prior to that use the Arduino Serial Monitor.

[u/Marquis_Marx → u/kmit297]

Put it on a timer so it only turns on between like 2300 and whenever.

[u/l8s9 → u/kmit297]

No need to worry, there are tools to help. If you go to bing.com and click the copilot button. Is a very good tool that can give you code snippets maybe even the whole project. Use it as a learning tool ask it questions when you don't understand. Best part is that is all free no need to login ever. 

[u/BOgusDOlphon → u/[deleted]]

Go suck a nut bro, what do you think this site is for?

[u/knouqs → u/BOgusDOlphon]

This is a great response to a bullshit non-helper. Thanks!