Sound designers Joel Korelitz and Colin Coogan created a startup called Starling, which set out to eliminate the annoying microwave notification sound solely through code changes.
Sound designers Joel Korelitz and Colin Coogan created a startup called Starling, which set out to eliminate the annoying microwave notification sound solely through code changes.
As Wired writes, the sound designers have previously worked with major clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Sega, and Ford.
«Korelitz, like the rest of us, hates the unbearable beeping of his microwave, so he decided to try to do something about it,» the publication explains.
The annoying sound microwaves make that alerts consumers when the heating cycle is over is generated by a cheap device called a «passive piezoelectric buzzer,» which was first brought to the mass market in the 1970s by Japanese manufacturers.
Due to their low cost and simplicity, buzzers have found their way into thousands of different gadgets, but these devices have significant limitations in functionality, so manufacturers can only set the frequency and duration of the sound signal, but no more. At the same time, it is precisely their low cost and simplicity that remain the main factor why these devices are still used in such equipment as microwave ovens, and manufacturers have no intention of abandoning them.
«Competition in the consumer electronics market is fierce. Why replace a super-cheap part that does its job with something more expensive?» the article asks rhetorically.
Therefore, the authors of the startup Starling Korelitz and Koogan aim to improve the sound of a microwave oven without using new equipment — with chips and buzzers already on the market. Thus, the startupers carried out their technical experiments exclusively at the code level, «playing» with frequency and duration settings.
«Any microcontroller that accepts C++ can accept different programming and make different sounds. There’s already a microcontroller there, and there’s already a piezoelectric buzzer,» says Korelitz, who created a series of sounds that are significantly different from traditional microwave oven beeps.
Using software called Microwave Sound Bench, the startups demonstrated the new microwave sounds they created.
«I’m doing all this on Arduino, but it’s really just C++. The manufacturer has to be open to embedding new code into their device, but that’s it. Theoretically, it’s compatible with any hardware that’s in a microwave,» says Korelitz.
As a test setup, he used a microcontroller (Arduino UNO R4 Minima) and a breadboard with three different piezoelectric buzzers.
Korelitz has a way to simulate loudness using piezo technology. «If you go through the frequencies, you’ll notice that in a certain frequency range, the buzzers just sound louder,» he says.
The startups at Starling would like to collaborate with big companies like Panasonic or Samsung to solve the problem of annoying microwave noise, and they’re not too worried about their idea being stolen.
«There’s no big fear of someone stealing it. We just want to solve the problem of living in a world with sounds that annoy everyone,» Korelitz claims.
As dev.ua wrote, IT engineer Ray Foss developed software that makes the Steam Controller gamepad independently move across the surface of the table to the charging station.
