Maker uses Raspberry Pi and AI to block noisy neighbor's music by hacking nearby Bluetooth speakers

Something something, part 15 of the FCC rules. Maybe don't do this.

Operation is subject to the following two conditions:
(1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and
(2) this device must accept any interference received
-back of every device, it seemed, in the 90s
- Worse: in the 1980s, the FCC was convinced that personal computers were from the Devil and they forced 8-bit computer manufacturers to install these really heavy and bulky metal RF shields around the motherboards...for reasons.
- I always wondered why it was required to accept any interference received. Just so the government can fuck with your shit if they want?
- Well as long as he's not got (1) written on his RPi, I'd say we're all good.

Idk maybe go over and knock on the door and have a conversation about it?

Seems easier.

From my experience, people this noisy are unlikely to be cooperative about it. Or anything else
- This has been my experience too. A random party w/ friends that rages until the next morning after 2 months of silence? Sorry, didn't mean to be that loud. We'll keep it down next time, let you know in advance, & even extend an invite. An every 3rd day blasting of music at whatever hour? Fuck you, I pay rent, I don't care if it bothers you.
- I've found the opposite.
  A lot of people don't understand just how paperthin those walls are or they come from an environment of "there will be noise". If someone actually, politely, asks them to keep it down during reasonable hours, then people usually will.
  The issue is when people pound on the door as though the noise maker is the greatest asshole ever. That triggers spite. Same with unreasonable demands.
  Like, if someone asks me to keep it down at 10 PM? I will apologize like hell and turn it down. You ask me to keep it down at 9 am? I will probably tell you to go fuck yourself and explain that you live in an apartment building and there is going to be noise.
  Fun story time! One of my exes was very much "the loud neighbor". Clomping around in heavy slippers at all hours of the night, playing loud music, turning up her tv, having a subwoofer in an apartment, etc. After I realized and felt bad I had an awkward talk like "hey... have any of your neighbors ever complained? Because if this were my apartment they would hear this god awful lawyer show from the lobby". She didn't believe me so I told her to just step out into the hallway and then she was MORTIFIED. Immediately turned down everything and unplugged the sub. Even wrote up a nice letter that she taped on all her neighbors' doors to apologize.
  Within a week there had been a complaint filed against her for "vandalizing" someone's door... by taping an apology note on there.
  Good times.
- Might be. Wouldn't know until you try, though.
  I have a schizophrenic alcoholic 60y troll of a woman (like troll, physically) living upstairs. Always banging, screaming, listening to shitty drinking songs on a loop.
  But I went over. Several times.
  Now I just wear earplugs, take benzos and occasionally think about picking up my hammer and going for another "talk". I thought about milder options as well. Superglue in her keyhole? Then she'd have to call a locksmith, and she's not capable of holding a conversation long enough to convey she needs one.
  Wish she had bt speakers I could hack, but that'd probably just make her scream more.
  And the landlord won't do shit after years of me sending videos of this loony.
Dude in my apartment complex was murdered for asking his neighbor to turn their music down. The civil option doesn't work when the other party isn't civil, unfortunately.
People like this can be unstable. I had to live next door to someone like this. After another neighbor demanded that someone to turn down their music. That someone later on started throwing rocks at my house.
- The schizophrenic makes so much noise upstairs that my drunken downstairs troll of a neighbour (but like, half-troll, compared to the upstairs one) came banging on my door one night while I was sleeping.
  This building sucks but I haven’t the money to move.
  Oh and "can be unstable"? No. She is. Very much. I'm not calling her schizophrenic. She is. Like I know that for a fact, I was once in the pharmacy when she got her pills, I know about meds, and you can't really get much stronger schizophrenia medication without being in a hospital.
I tried this, once.
There was 3 gunshots from what sounded like inside the place before my knuckles hit the door, and I turned around and ran the fuck back home.
This isnt the 1950s. Asking assholes to have some consideration, no matter how polite, is a good way to get dead.
(for the record,later found out the gunshots were from the back yard, turns out they were also drunk and shooting guns into the air for... reasons?)
- This isnt the 1950s. Asking assholes to have some consideration, no matter how polite, is a good way to get dead.
  Perhaps for you Americans.
  I live literally in the worst area of my city in Finland, and I don't need to fear anything like that.
  In my last apartment, my downstairs neighbour was a guy who had sat 14 years for 1st degree murder and he hustled meth. He was actually pretty chill, and I was never even the slightest bit worried about him.
  I've driven a taxi on weekends and evenings, driving bikers from their clubhouses. One guy jumped in literally yelling "were gonna go kill people" into his phone "no I don't have any money" and whatnot. I didn't challenge him, thought it easier to just drive him where he wants to. Ended up going to his brother, who was a very normal family man, he talked the face tattooed biker down, then gave him money. It ended up being the best fare of my night.
  All this because we have gun control. I really don't have to be afraid. I mean, I have been, several times, as a younger person. But at least here in Finland, you don't actually need to fear much more than perhaps getting a fist in the face.
  So yeah, please tell me more about how hacking your possibly armed and unreasonable neighbour would be less upsetting to him than just asking them to? Or writing a polite letter?
  Kids these days will do everything to avoid social interaction, honestly.
  Waking up at 9, putting on some reggaeton for your morning routine isn't that unreasonable and if no-one complains, how would you know you're bothering someone? And if your BT speaker just cuts out, you'd definitely try to figure out why, and perhaps even try getting a new one, so hacking won't actually solve the issue.
You'd think so, but the same inconsiderate morons that loudly blast music at all times of the day and night tend not to take constructive criticism very well.
- Sure, but this person apparently always plays the same music, at the same time of the day, in the morning.
  Not "at all times of the day and night."
You vs a group of drunk, inadequate people, at night. What can go wrong?
- Lots of things, of course.
  However I've been in that situation thousands and thousands of times, and only a few times has anything gone seriously wrong.
Tried that with my neighbor once. It escalated until I was calling cops on him at 3:30 in the morning. People are shit and don't care until someone finally has enough and retaliates.
- This person rarely seems to be an issue at 3.30 in the morning though.
  I think we can deduce something from the "always 9am" thing.
  Like I get noisy neighbours who don't care are a thing. But also, it's not unreasonable to have a morning routine where you put on some music and do some light exercise at 9am.
  Unless its actually blaring to high heaven, I don't see the neighbour being at fault here.
  I know it's irritating as fuck, but it's not unreasonable. I used to work nights and still have pretty much the same schedule and I fucking loathe my neighbours, but I have gone there to actually talk to them. These ones can't be reasoned with.
  Some can. Some.
Can't always do that, for example in condo buildings. If they live in another building you may not be able to get into it at all, and often getting to different floors isn't possible.
hmmm ... what if your intorvert 🙁
- What if my introvert?
I have a neighbor 3 houses down that does this same shit with shitty rock music every single night from about 7pm to 6am. He's been talked to and had the police called on him multiple times but he doesn't give a shit and keeps doing it (going on maybe 2 years now) the guy directly across from him is even a state trooper and that hasn't made any impact either.
haha, somebody made this exact same comment on hacker news!

So it only disrupted the speaker when it detected reggaeton?

So it wasn't the loud music early in the morning he objected to, he just thought his neighbor had shitty taste.

it comes across pretty much like "does not like that Latino neighbors listen to Latina music".
- Uhm. If you'd read the article you'd know that the person that made this is in Argentina so they're not "latino" neighbors. For him they're just neighbors.
  Also, reggaeton is mentioned specifically simply becayse he had to find a way to identify the loud noises his neighbors' speakers were making. If they were listening to loud Trash Metal for example, he would've programmed the device to detect that genre.
  Don't make this a hate or discrimination thing. That's not what it is.

What's the legality of jamming wireless signals?

Very much illegal.
You won’t likely get caught doing it once or twice, but repeatedly doing it will get you a hefty fine and potentially even criminal charges.
Not to mention, imagine if your jamming prevents someone making an emergency call. Or if you disrupt emergency services.
Recording yourself doing it is just asking for trouble, like filming yourself going over twice the speed limit.
- Worth pointing out, this specific kind of attack targets a device based on its mac address and sends it shedloads of junk requests. There is no chance of it interfering with emergency wireless transmissions.
  That said, i agree it's not OK to mess with other people's devices like this.
- You deserve the consequences, too.
  As annoying as loud music might be (9AM definitely isn't early lol), it's not up to you to decide what the appropriate volume for someone to play music on their property is. They very probably are perfectly legally entitled to do so.
  Maliciously attacking their shit is not OK.
Not.
Yeah it's really bad news.
And chances are it will be investigated pretty quickly... you're likely to cause problems for more than just the next door neighbour's music. A friend of mine is a cellular radio technician and is occasionally tasked with identifying signal problems. Usually it's unintentional - some electronic device that isn't working properly, and they have tools to find the source relatively quickly and and order the owner to turn off and repair/destroy whatever is causing problems.
He said when nobody is home in the building that appears to be broadcasting noise, he will call the utility company and have them shut off power to the building to try to stop whatever is broadcasting.
If it's intentional... cops will be called.
Like most things, it’s only illegal if you get caught. And I suspect the person blasting loud music isn’t going to have the presence of mind, or technical know how to identify intentional Bluetooth disruption.

neighbor plugs in aux cord, hack useless.

- Okay here. USB KILLER flash drive.
Then you transition to this: https://lifehacker.com/silence-noisy-neighbors-by-transmitting-your-music-to-t-5852903
Drill bit, fiber optic camera, a fish tape with a hook end and some drywall putty to fix the hole afterwards.
There are always answers.
- Modern problems require macgyver solutions

9am seems reasonable. Just hack it to set the max level volume at 20% or whatever is reasonable.

The ol stuxnet approach, if you make it subtle enough you might just get away with it
I hate that the article uses the word hack, as it implies some type of control. The only thing this is doing is sending the specific device a bunch of junk data so it can't receive its actual data

Everyone in here debating about the ethics of this situation, and here I am thinking, "What the fuck is 'Raggaeton'?"

Just open YouTube and type "Daddy Yankee". It's music that is pervasive throughout South America, it's very much the Latin American version of Hip Hop and Rap music.
One of the lucky 10,000?
Its a horrible music from south america that sounds basically always the same.
The lyrics are either "let's fuck" or "why did you fuck him/her let's fuck" or "I'm crying, let's fuck"
I love you people but god I hate raggaeton
- you people
  Yikes
  You seem a bit ignorant and prejudiced, because you could make that same argument for modern english music (especially rap). But you probably didn't because when it's music you like, mature themes are okay.
  Also, not all reggaeton has those themes. But, i guess it's easier to generalize :)
- Insight you can say the same about a lot of popular music.
  Most rap music is about how they want to sleep with someone. Or multiple someone. Only got found out that they slept with multiple someone's. Or they are broke.
  Most pop music is the same, except they get drunk first. On the people involved are apparently more attractive
- I miss hearing it while walking down the street in Buenos Aires. It gives the space character.

Should have used a 3.5mm cable...

So it’s like evil Shazam.

Not all heroes wear capes

Beyond petty.

How does something like this actually intially grt reported on—did the neighbor call the police when his BlueTooth™️ wasnt working?

The maker shared his project online, he wasn't "caught". The article even links to the project.
- There's this tension where everyone's implying its illegal...

vhm-314 spotted in thumbnail!! :D

The hero we don't deserve, but desperately need!

9am? I've been up for six hours by then. If you play loud music after 7:30 pm tho I might have to retaliate.

But only reggaeton? Seems like someone just has an issue with one genre of music.

That's just the trigger. If they neighbor were listening to Classical music, he would've used that.