9 ms·

At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that w

by egd 6y ago

At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that was paging, but I think I'm actually going to do that at my next gig. Outside the land of software, engineers debug systems using sound all the time - I think we're underutilizing our senses and our pattern recognition.

lb1lf 6y ago
-At a former employer, I had coded some embedded devices to spit out their bus address and current error code in morse code using the buzzer in the keypad. Saved me lots of time during initial debugging of new installations, then I'd just disable the buzzer before heading for home. (At least) on one occasion I forgot; years later a puzzled chief engineer calls me and says that his first officer had told him that E209 had a pending IGBT failure while they were discussing issues with the equipment we'd delivered over the din of the buzzers. Would that hypothesis have any possible merit?
WalterBright 6y ago
I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do is digitize the speech, then turn the pin on and off as the wave crosses 0.) Ditto for every device that comes with a chart saying which LED blink pattern means what status. Like the "fast blink" and "slow blink". The LED is blinking, is that "fast" or "slow"?
- avip 6y ago
  Any modestly "modern" elevator would have Braille indicators. And many also announce floors same way public transit does.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I've never been in an elevator that announced the floors with anything better than a ping. This is despite elevators being controlled by single board computers since around 1980. The buttons have had braille on them for a long time.
    - Piskvorrr 6y ago
      Interesting. OTOH, while old builds here (electromechanical, no microcontrollers, <1990) lack even the basic ping, I haven't been in an elevator built in the new millenium which wasn't excessively chatty. (Central Europe mostly, but the same experience everywhere I went: "ground floor, main entrance, access to train station; mind the door; door is opening")
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      I haven't seen taking ones a ton, outside of hotels and fairly new conference centers and the like.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      I know of at least a few in London office buildings that speak. Especially buildings with large banks of elevators that tends to have "fancier" control systems that manage all of the elevators.
    - andrewshadura 6y ago
      Interesting you say that, literally every lift in a public space that does any sound at all around here announces each floor with proper spoken speech, not just a ping.
    - andrewshadura 6y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzCdkkG4Gnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzCdkkG4Gnk
    - apetresc 6y ago
      Canadian here - even my condo building elevator announces floor numbers with a (pretty well-digitized) voice. And believe me, my building is no marvel of modernity.
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  The "ping for accessibility" is a holdover from ancient times (think 1910s), when there was an actual bell that was rung by the elevator's passage (one ding up, two dings down, IIRC). Current technology has (and uses) far better capabilities, either by (common) samples or by (uncommon) speech synthesis: "ding" "Floor 6." "Doors opening..."
- vidarh 6y ago
  A fun demonstration of getting comprehensible sound via one bit sampling is that you can use a tight loop on a C64 to read from any number of input pins (such as the tape input) to sample sound, and play it back either by writing to any number of outputs and connect it to a speaker, or indirectly by using the signal to toggle the sound chip volume up and down. So not only can you get comprehensible voices from a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, pretty much any CPU newer than the mid 70's will be powerful enough to drive it. So I agree - there's not really any excuse other than that people haven't thought about the UI.
  - woodrowbarlow 6y ago
    my c64 is sitting right next to me, and i think i'll play with this after work. thanks!
    - vidarh 6y ago
      Careful not to burn anything out... Though the C64 is pretty indestructible - I connected all kinds of things to the IO lines of it back in the day... And a few inadvisable cases of soldering things straight to the user port pins (I'm amazed I never destroyed any machines.... that way) A tip is to turn off the screen during sampling and playback, as otherwise the video chip steals a lot of memory cycles. You might then also be interested in this far more impressive playback with the C64: https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player-for.html https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-mus...
- zeveb 6y ago
  The one edge case is that the bells work for all blind folks, not just those who understand the language spoken by and announcement. Of course, a blond person in that case could just count announcements …
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    Hey, let's leave hair color out of this.
    - zeveb 6y ago
      Argh, wish I'd got your comment in time. I meant, of course, a blind person!
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > Of course, a blond person in that case could just count announcements … Exactly, he's not worse off. Besides, I've traveled in foreign countries where I literally do not know a single word in that language. You start picking up words by association almost immediately.
  - patmorgan23 6y ago
    The elevators in my building only make one announcement per stop.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I have noticed that some street walk/don't walk signs now have a voice rather than just a tone. It sure took a long time. Though the voice would be improved by saying "walk east" rather than just "walk". But still, hardly any use a voice.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jjeaff 6y ago
It might depend on the person, but sound can be a powerful way to perceive the world. When I was living in another country and learning the language, I found that the difference between a lot of bad or mediocre language learners and those that were really good, was that those that were good eventually stopped thinking in terms of grammar rules and dictionary words and started remembering phrases by how they sounded. If you say something that is grammatically incorrect in your own language, most native speakers will tell you it just "sounds" wrong. They can't even explain the rules of why it is wrong, but they know it sounds wrong.

by egd 6y ago

lb1lf 6y ago

-At a former employer, I had coded some embedded devices to spit out their bus address and current error code in morse code using the buzzer in the keypad. Saved me lots of time during initial debugging of new installations, then I'd just disable the buzzer before heading for home. (At least) on one occasion I forgot; years later a puzzled chief engineer calls me and says that his first officer had told him that E209 had a pending IGBT failure while they were discussing issues with the equipment we'd delivered over the din of the buzzers. Would that hypothesis have any possible merit?

WalterBright 6y ago

I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do is digitize the speech, then turn the pin on and off as the wave crosses 0.) Ditto for every device that comes with a chart saying which LED blink pattern means what status. Like the "fast blink" and "slow blink". The LED is blinking, is that "fast" or "slow"?

avip 6y ago
Any modestly "modern" elevator would have Braille indicators. And many also announce floors same way public transit does.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I've never been in an elevator that announced the floors with anything better than a ping. This is despite elevators being controlled by single board computers since around 1980. The buttons have had braille on them for a long time.
  - Piskvorrr 6y ago
    Interesting. OTOH, while old builds here (electromechanical, no microcontrollers, <1990) lack even the basic ping, I haven't been in an elevator built in the new millenium which wasn't excessively chatty. (Central Europe mostly, but the same experience everywhere I went: "ground floor, main entrance, access to train station; mind the door; door is opening")
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    I haven't seen taking ones a ton, outside of hotels and fairly new conference centers and the like.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    I know of at least a few in London office buildings that speak. Especially buildings with large banks of elevators that tends to have "fancier" control systems that manage all of the elevators.
  - andrewshadura 6y ago
    Interesting you say that, literally every lift in a public space that does any sound at all around here announces each floor with proper spoken speech, not just a ping.
  - andrewshadura 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzCdkkG4Gnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzCdkkG4Gnk
  - apetresc 6y ago
    Canadian here - even my condo building elevator announces floor numbers with a (pretty well-digitized) voice. And believe me, my building is no marvel of modernity.
Piskvorrr 6y ago
The "ping for accessibility" is a holdover from ancient times (think 1910s), when there was an actual bell that was rung by the elevator's passage (one ding up, two dings down, IIRC). Current technology has (and uses) far better capabilities, either by (common) samples or by (uncommon) speech synthesis: "ding" "Floor 6." "Doors opening..."
vidarh 6y ago
A fun demonstration of getting comprehensible sound via one bit sampling is that you can use a tight loop on a C64 to read from any number of input pins (such as the tape input) to sample sound, and play it back either by writing to any number of outputs and connect it to a speaker, or indirectly by using the signal to toggle the sound chip volume up and down. So not only can you get comprehensible voices from a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, pretty much any CPU newer than the mid 70's will be powerful enough to drive it. So I agree - there's not really any excuse other than that people haven't thought about the UI.
- woodrowbarlow 6y ago
  my c64 is sitting right next to me, and i think i'll play with this after work. thanks!
  - vidarh 6y ago
    Careful not to burn anything out... Though the C64 is pretty indestructible - I connected all kinds of things to the IO lines of it back in the day... And a few inadvisable cases of soldering things straight to the user port pins (I'm amazed I never destroyed any machines.... that way) A tip is to turn off the screen during sampling and playback, as otherwise the video chip steals a lot of memory cycles. You might then also be interested in this far more impressive playback with the C64: https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player-for.html https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-mus...
zeveb 6y ago
The one edge case is that the bells work for all blind folks, not just those who understand the language spoken by and announcement. Of course, a blond person in that case could just count announcements …
- jaywalk 6y ago
  Hey, let's leave hair color out of this.
  - zeveb 6y ago
    Argh, wish I'd got your comment in time. I meant, of course, a blind person!
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > Of course, a blond person in that case could just count announcements … Exactly, he's not worse off. Besides, I've traveled in foreign countries where I literally do not know a single word in that language. You start picking up words by association almost immediately.
- patmorgan23 6y ago
  The elevators in my building only make one announcement per stop.
WalterBright 6y ago
I have noticed that some street walk/don't walk signs now have a voice rather than just a tone. It sure took a long time. Though the voice would be improved by saying "walk east" rather than just "walk". But still, hardly any use a voice.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jjeaff 6y ago

It might depend on the person, but sound can be a powerful way to perceive the world. When I was living in another country and learning the language, I found that the difference between a lot of bad or mediocre language learners and those that were really good, was that those that were good eventually stopped thinking in terms of grammar rules and dictionary words and started remembering phrases by how they sounded. If you say something that is grammatically incorrect in your own language, most native speakers will tell you it just "sounds" wrong. They can't even explain the rules of why it is wrong, but they know it sounds wrong.