TACOS (Transportation Alarm Communication Over-the-air System)
I’ve been noticing lots of car alarms lately – orphaned, bleating without a soul nearby to attend to them. I hear them everywhere: in the parking lot at work, at the store, by the food trucks, at the beach parking lot… and what really sucks is that if your car alarm goes off, and you’re not one of the lucky people who have a snazzy car with communication abilities, how will you ever know? You’ve got a life you know…things to do, stuff to take care of.
Anyway, there will be more on this later for part 2 of the project, but for now, enjoy a video of the working prototype. Bei and I used an old phone, wrote an app that runs a spectral analysis on the tone of the horn (the sound dampening effects the tone of the horn, so the app is configured to work in a specific location inside the vehicle) and alerts a person’s personal phone, wherever they are. Because it piggybacks off the cell network, it should work wherever the person has a cell signal.
Here’s a video: