Party Vibe

@Angel 701885 wrote:

Why do kids toys play so loud, I mean it’s a pain in the arse and it can’t be good for their hearing.

The Chinese have built into one silicon chip a Japanese design from 1970s that used just two small transistors to make a lot of noise into one small loudspeaker.

you can still see this design on many Japanese radio amateurs websites; they warn you it is harsh and distorted (a better circuit is used for actual radios) and its usually only used for things like alarm sirens for such things as noodle timers; where it makes sense for a middle aged Japanese dude who is liable to forget about the noodles whilst listening to his radio; and thus would end up with the noodles being too soggy or the pot boiling dry and possibly starting a small fire.

over the last 30 years there have also been big advances in the power of small batteries and also mylar loudspeakers and/or piezo buzzers (which weren’t around much in previous decades) are now popular in kids toys; they are no good for music listening but are very efficient for noisemakers like sirens and other high pitched sound these toys make and can handle rough conditions a lot better.

In late 90s my old employers got several of these particularly annoying musical toy delivered to them; some of us engineers had extracted the circuit board from a few of them and we planned to change the button cells for LR20 or even flag cells (the biggest 1,5V cell you can get, they were used in old telephones that needed local battery) and hide it in the ceilings of meeting rooms with a random trigger). Luckily for everyone else that company went out of business soon afterwards; as had we pulled that one off those devices could still be working today 😉

@Angel 701898 wrote:

The tiny one have a dog that’s barking extremely loud.

I didn’t complain when he dumped it in the bathtub (it needed a bath)

A few years ago I was going to get a realistic toy bull terrier, one of those chips and an IR detector as the whole lot would be €20 which is a lot cheaper (and better for animal welfare) than getting a real dog to guard the house (I would have needed to train both the dog and the cat we then had (he would not have accepted the new “intruder” immediately; I might even have had to take up barking and howling myself :laugh_at:)

I decided against it after this Asian family in London had their door put off the hinges by Police because someone had called RSPCA on them saying they were neglecting their dog (which was a similar realistic toy)!

The Police and RSPCA were very embarrased and had to pay the family compensation for the door to be repaired but I suspect there was some racism involved by the people who called 999 on them; and thats money gone from the RSPCA which could be used to protect other animals (some of my friends who are hippy/punk/squatter types always had RSPCA called to them even when their dogs were being well looked after and the officers didn’t want to do the call out but had to as their performance was monitored)

Nowadays you can get CCTV and conventional burglar alarms which are more of a deterrent and less risk of harm to a living creature (unfortunately some UK thieves will see the dog as a challenge or a valuable in itself and try to harm it or steal it)

its not illegal in Malaysia and is even encouraged by the Environment Ministry (at least for children) – so is meowing with cats – I got the impression folk there put up with the noise (Malaysia is a noisy country anyway) as they knew where all the small creatures were and it kept them occupied and safely in one place (also the Malaysians claim bangladeshis have wrongly claimed the “national cat” (the Bengal which is usually from a SE Asian breed rather than South Asian) so are trying to encourage a new one which is also a hybrid of wildcats and domestic cats. There are a lot of these hybrids at rescue centres but these don’t meow as much as more domestic cats so have to be encouraged to do so)