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What's that noise?

Post 1

Teasswill

Doing the ironing yesterday afternoon, kept hearing an occasional squeak - thought it was the board shifting. No, still happening when I took the laundry upstairs. Oh no, I thought, a baby bird has got stuck indoors somewhere... we stood & listened to try & locate the source.... got a torch to shine in dark corners, under shelves.... finally realised it was the smoke detector telling us the battery needed changing smiley - doh


What's that noise?

Post 2

SashaQ - happysad

smiley - laugh

That is a surprisingly difficult noise to pin down - mine did that last year, and it took me ages to work out which room the sound was in, never mind whereabouts in the room it was!

Difficult as well because it is just slow enough for us to think, 'Oh, it's stopped', then go somewhere else and suddenly... 'Bip!' smiley - rofl

Glad you got there eventually smiley - ok


What's that noise?

Post 3

Baron Grim

I want to know why smoke detectors start beeping when the batteries are still 95% fully charged. I actually bought some tiny LED flashlights that snap onto the top of a 9V battery just to get use out of the ones my smoke alarms feel aren't up to their exceedingly high standards.


BG smiley - pirate


What's that noise?

Post 4

SashaQ - happysad

I guess it starts at 95% to give you chance to:
a) Realise it is the smoke alarm that is beeping (which could take up to 99% of the remaining 5%)
b) Find out what batteries are needed, buy some, and change the batteries.

Tiny LED flashlights using batteries are a great idea - I can imagine it's not just smoke alarms that ask for a battery change when there's plenty of good power left in the cell smiley - ok


What's that noise?

Post 5

Teasswill

Indeed, my wireless keyboard said batteries low months before they ran out. Perhaps that's based on an expectation of using it all day long.

Wii mote & board do the same. As I keep a stock of spare batteries, I just wait until appliances etc don't work any more.


What's that noise?

Post 6

Baron Grim

Oh, Sasha... My smoke alarm won't accept rechargeable batteries at all. It demands a virgin sacrifice (where the virgin is a brand new, non-rechargeable alkaline battery).


I suspect it is mainly electronic devices rather than electric ones that demand specific voltages before rejecting a battery. Obviously they include an electronic switch in the device that tells it when the voltage has dropped below threshold. I suspect these devices will work at lower voltages but the device makers are in collusion with battery makers. It's insipid planned obsolescence.

Electric devices will just continue to work, just at a lower capacity. Lights will dim, fans will blow a bit slower, toothbrushes will take a bit longer to clean your teeth.

Yeah, I get it that you don't want a smoke alarm to perform at a degraded level, but I think their tolerances are just a bit extreme if you can't use rechargeables.


BG smiley - pirate


What's that noise?

Post 7

Baron Grim

Ooops... I thought you typed "charge" when you actually typed change.
Sorry for the misconception, Sasha.

smiley - laugh


What's that noise?

Post 8

SashaQ - happysad

smiley - laugh No worries - it is an interesting question about rechargeable batteries. I had some in a camera and they worked well (the camera even had a setting to confirm whether the batteries were Alkaline or NiMH to optimise power usage) but I tried using one of the rechargeables in a clock recently and the clock didn't recognise the battery at all...

Good point about electronics, too... My tablet computer used to tell me the battery percentage remaining, so I would put it on charge when it got to 5%, but it did an update and changed the indicator to a picture of a battery - sometimes it will work for ages with a thin green line at the bottom of the battery picture, and sometimes it stops working with (what I think is) a thin green line in the picture and only displays the 'Plug In Now' icon...


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