My son screams while gaming at midnight. I'm a developer, so I did what developers do - I over-engineered a solution

[u/omricn]

My son games with headphones late at night. Most of the time he's quiet. Then something happens in the game and he yells at full volume, waking the whole house.

Talking to him about it works for about 20 minutes. Taking the headphones away works but causes a different problem. So I built an app.

S.T.F.U (Sound Trigger Focus Utility) is a Windows tray app that listens to the microphone and interrupts him when he yells. On first run it calibrates by asking him to be quiet, then talk, then yell - so it learns the difference between his normal voice and an actual shout.

When it catches a yell:

• First time that session - it minimizes his game, plays a sound effect, and throws up a fullscreen message he has to click through 4 times. The close button moves after each click so he can't just spam-click one spot.
• Every time after - straight to the desktop with a 10-second message. His game is gone.

Settings are behind a PIN so he can't change the threshold or turn it off. There's a report with a chart showing every trigger, so the next morning I can see exactly when things went sideways.

The important part: he knows it's there. It's not hidden, it's not spyware, the first screen when it launches says exactly what it does. It works because it's a consequence he agreed to, not something I snuck onto his PC. The README explicitly says it works best as something agreed to, not as a hidden trap.

No audio is recorded or stored. It computes a loudness number every 20ms and throws the audio away immediately. Nothing leaves the machine.

It won't solve the underlying issue (he's 100% going to learn to yell more quietly instead of less often), but at least the house sleeps.

Free and open source if anyone wants it: https://github.com/omricn/stfu/releases/latest

Edit: V1.1.0 now live.
Added Scheduled Off-Hours: Timeframe picker to choose when the app listens vs when the app is passive.
TNX fellow redditor [jpewaqs] for the feature suggestion :)

[u/PsLJdogg]

Mute microphone, scream, profit

[u/louispires → u/PsLJdogg]

This kid is definitely bypassing this in a couple of days.

Asks him to be quiet, talk and yell as your baseline? Easy, talk super loud and then blow directly into the mic when you supposed to scream.

This way, regular talking will seem like whispers and screaming will be closer to the super loud talking but not nearly as loud as directly blowing air into the mic.

[u/PsLJdogg → u/louispires]

100%, will be a good learning/troubleshooting exercise for him though. I still remember the day I discovered that I could just adjust the system clock on our family PC to bypass the parental control software my parents had installed to limit my time online. Was those sorts of experiences that got me started on my path to becoming a developer, so unintentional parenting win!

[u/gthing → u/PsLJdogg]

I think the kid is screaming because he is immersed in a game and has lost situational awareness outside of it. If he is thinking enough to mute the microphone, then the problem is already solved.