Infernal Beeping
Posted on | November 7, 2007 at 7:42 am | 5 Comments
Pet Peeve of the Day: Okay, I’m getting really tired of this. Someone keeps hijacking my wireless temperature sensors. First, it was the magic clock (the outside temperature display on my atomic clock always reads something real, even though I never hooked up the remote transmitter; obviously it is picking it up from a neighbor’s transmitter). Now it’s happening again, with a different device. And this time the consequences are freakin’ disastrous.
Allow me to explain. I’ve got a Radio Shack wireless thermometer, an old model that they no longer sell. You can use up to three remote sensors/transmitters with it. It came with one sensor and I bought another one at the same time. I put one sensor on my front porch, and one under my back deck. The base unit sits inside the house in my kitchen, and with it I can check the temperature out front and out back. The front gets more sun, so it’s usually higher. If I take an average of the two readings, that gives a pretty close approximation of the actual temperature. The primary thing I use it for is to determine what to wear when I go jogging. It works very well for that. It also displays the inside temperature where the base unit is.
When the first winter after I bought the thermometer rolled around, I was awakened in the night by an annoying beeping sound every minute or so. It was like a fire alarm, but not quite so insistent. I finally tracked it down the wireless thermometer. It has a “low temperature alarm” that goes off whenever the temperature reading goes below a certain value (I think it’s like 38°F, but I’ve lost the manual). Well, needless to say, the outside temperature goes below that quite often out here in every season except summer. You can turn the alarm off by pushing one of the buttons, but as soon as the temperature changes, it goes off again. Some moron designed this thing. On their newer models, you can turn this function on or off.
So I read the manual and it said that the low temperature alarm is only active for sensor 1. Great. All I needed to do was change sensor 1 to be sensor 3 (they are assignable) and then I wouldn’t have a sensor 1. Problem solved, though it meant I could never hook up a third sensor. Fine – who needs three anyway?
Flasshe ahead a few years to yesterday morning. I just gotten out of bed after sleeping in from the late night at the concert. I heard an annoying beeping, and my sleep-fogged brain couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I finally tracked it down to the wireless thermometer base unit in the kitchen. Yep, you guessed it. It had a reading for sensor 1, which was below the low temperature threshold, and it was beeping. (And since I lost the manual, I didn’t know which button shuts the thing off. I tried them all, and it was still beeping every minute or so.) Somehow, one of my nearby neighbors must’ve gotten one of these units and had a remote transmitter hooked up to sensor 1. I kept wondering if their base unit was going off also. I didn’t know what to do. You can’t even switch the display to another sensor – it always goes back to sensor 1 and sounds the alarm if the temp on it is below the threshold. The only thing I could do was deactivate the base unit by taking the batteries out of it.
When I told N about it, she was like, “That is unacceptable. There should be no beeping in the middle of the night. Why can’t you turn it off? What is that for anyway? Are you some farmer… growing oranges… and you need to know when to go cover the crops?!?”
I thought about this problem all day at work and finally came up with a solution. I remembered that my dad had the same device when he was living at his assisted living apartment. When we moved him to the nursing home, I inherited many such items. So when I got home, I dug around my basement until I found his remote transmitter. It was set to sensor 2, and the batteries were still working, yet I know my sensor 2 was the one connecting to my base unit, and not this one (the temperatures were very different).
So I switched my dad’s transmitter to sensor 1 and reset everything. Presto! The base unit is now picking up this new sensor 1 instead of the neighbor’s unit. I put the sensor into the basement. No more beeping. I suppose if it ever does start beeping now, it really will be indicating a problem, since the basement shouldn’t get that cold. My ingenuity saves the day again. I’m so lucky to know someone like me.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 43°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Common Ground” (Midnight Oil)
- “Insincere Inspiration” (Eleventh Dream Day)
- “The Trial Of The Century” (The French Kicks)
- “Happy Birthday John” (Starflyer 59)
- “Went Crazy” (The Teardrop Explodes)
- “Inaction” (We Are Scientists)
Today’s Weight: 162.6 lbs
Lunch Yesterday: Gangster Wrap at The Hornet. Yummy!
Latre.
Comments
5 Responses to “Infernal Beeping”
November 7th, 2007 @ 10:48 am
I would have tossed the damn thing in the nearest trash can. You’re obviously much more patient than I.
November 7th, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
Disconnect the beeper ;D
November 7th, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
That would be too logical. And it would require me to do something with my hands.
November 7th, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
You’ve got all that high-tech equipment and you still HAND-TYPE the weather info into each blog post? C’mon, where’s the live-updated XML browser gewgaw – I want “Roger’s Basement Temperature (and Pet Peeves)” on the lower-right corner of my monitor at work. Or at least a Firefox plugin.
November 7th, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
It’s because you’re a goddam ORANGE FARMER, that’s why.
Tell N. I’m calling you that from now on.
Or at least until I forget all about it. (Probably, oh, twenty minutes or so…)