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Old March 10th 07, 01:47 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,sci.electronics.design
chuck chuck is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Nov 2006
Posts: 48
Default Detecting Ultrasound

wrote:
Hi chaps,

I suspect a neighbour of a friend of mine is using an ultrasonic bird-
scarer to frighten off his pets. The man concerned won´t admit to it,
but there are times when his dog and two cats just seem to get
suddenly very distressed and hypermanic for no apparent reason. I`d
like to at least eliminate this possibility before considering any
others. So the question is, what´s the simplest way to detect
ultrasound? My web research leads me to believe the area of interest
is between 20 and 30khz. Most common bird scarers warble between these
two limits which are of course above the range of human hearing. I´ve
acquired an ultrasonic transducer that transmits on 41khz. If I couple
this up to a wien-bridge oscillator trimmed to the same frequency, I
figure I ought to be able to hear a warble if indeed this guy is using
a birdscarer, because the difference between 41khz and 20khz-30khz
will be audible to me. Is this feasible to "air mix" the two
frequencies in this simple way and hear a result, or is something more
complicated required?
Thanks!


Interesting.

The mixing process requires a non-linear device, which, for your
purposes, I suspect the air is not. I've often considered, but never
attempted, a similar mixing process using human ears (connected and
intact, of course), since ears are quite non-linear. Ears won't work as
mixers in your case since, at least for most adults, they are
insensitive to ultrasonic frequencies (as well as to intelligent
political analysis, it seems).

The suggested bat detector is far more promising.

Chuck

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