The purpose of this device is to silence car alarms which are repeatedly triggering all night long. A series of microphones in the missile cone would be fed into a DSP chip which would look for common sound frequencies of car alarms (typically one of 6 tones). The doppler shift would also be taken into account and calculated. Several small gyroscopes would help the missile track its course internally. The relative signal strengths on each sensor would be fed into the guidance system. The computer will also compare doppler shift to increase accuracy. This would be done by comparing current and past doppler shifts and attempting to maximize it. When the missile is nearing its target, the sound volume will become louder. Once the sound volume of the car alarm tones has passed a certain threshold, the missile will arm itself, enabling a shock sensor. Upon impact with the car or a nearby object, the shock sensor will trigger and detonate the explosives which will hopefully disable the noisy car alarm.-- ftzdomino, Oct 21 2004 Get help. http://www.halfbake...editorial/help.htmlYou need it! [contracts, Oct 21 2004] [ftzdomino], welcome to the HalfBakery! [marked-for-d-letion] Rant. [link]-- contracts, Oct 21 2004 Contracts: I read through it. Is it just the category or do you feel that this idea in general is inappropriate?-- ftzdomino, Oct 21 2004 Oh, I think it's not inappropriate nor, at its level of detail, a rant, either. I'm not sure, though, that anything described here is particularly original. Sound seeking or discriminating systems likely exist for other robotic or sensor-network purposes--like the discriminators used to isolate the sound of breaking glass for alarm systems ;-)
In any case I don't think it should be MFD on rant/advocacy basis.-- bristolz, Oct 21 2004 That's interesting - I was about to suggest this myself. In a just world, this would get the Nobel Peace Prize. If Henry Kissinger can get it for bombing North Vietnam ...
The problem is that the thundrous explosion would set off other car alarms nearby. You would use up a lot of missiles before ending the racket. The neighbors would talk.
When I suffered from a moron who parked his morning-beep-beeping car under my apartment window ("but if I parked it near MY apartment, it would wake my girlfriend" explained Mr. B---head) I took direct action. I developed a mixture that looked like (and attacked paint like) bird poop and dropped it on his car. It looked like it came from the eaves of the building. He parked his car elsewhere.-- keithl, Dec 08 2004 I don't think this a rant either. It is an idea derived from a rant, but that applies to 87.6% of ideas generally, necessity being the mother of invention and all that.-- Belfry, Dec 08 2004 I agree with [keithl], an anti-car alarm explosive device that would set off many other car alarms isn't very good. Try moving said car to, I don't know, my house? I might even pay you! Of course, the point of a car alarm is to prevent people from doing that... Anyway, this isn't a rant! Rants are just ideas that, instead of being used, are made longer and angrier. This is just an idea.-- Shadow Phoenix, Sep 03 2007 I can't see any reason to mark this for d-letion. The motivation behind it might be tantamount to a rant, but that's true of many (most?) inventions.
And the fact that similar systems exist for other purposes doesn't detract from its inventiveness, either: it's a new combination of existing technologies for a different purpose. Again, this is true of many (most?) inventions.
A bun.-- Cosh i Pi, Sep 04 2007 I'd like to suggest a modification (which I came here to post as a new entry until I found this).
There already exist anti-radar missiles (I believe - if not I guess that could be another entry) that are launched high above an airfield (or similar) and float slowly down towards earth on a parachute. When they detect radar then they release the parachute and zoom off to destroy the radar installation.
The same approach could be used here, with fleets of missiles descending slowly over a city like dandelion seeds (but bigger).
Another modification I would make is to target car horns (possibly relevant context - I live in Santiago, Chile).
Finally, to address one other comment here about triggering nearby alarms: this seems like a feature, not a bug. Cars with oversensitive alarms tend to sound whenever a noisy motorbike drives past. So triggering them would simply hasten the cleansing process. We should probably target the noisy motorbikes too.-- acooke, Jan 20 2009 [+]I think that this is indeed a rant.. but a good one! Car alarms are useless.-- Jscotty, Jan 20 2009 If the missile simply zapped the electronics to kill the alarm, it wouldn't set off the others around it.
Also, if the alarm is going off legitimately, the would-be car thief would become toast. How quickly would car thefts drop if this was in place!!-- Skrewloose, Jan 21 2009 random, halfbakery