This is not about beeping car horns. No, this is how to stop the beeping of the smoke detector in your home, or more accurately, the “chirping” of the device.
The bird-like sound recently kept a friend of mine from his sleep. He has a bad knee, soon to require replacement, and his wife recently had her hip replaced. Neither being able to climb a ladder, they called me to help, not knowing my technological incompetence. Or, maybe he did, and he wanted some laughs.
Whatever it was, he rang me on the cell and asked if I could come over to replace the battery in the smoke detector, as it’s bird-like sound was waking them up in the middle of the night. Despite my inability to master electronics, I jumped at the chance to make a piece of equipment function properly by replacing a battery. Sounded like I could do it.
Of course, nothing ever turns out the way you project it will. That’s why life is filled with curse words and harried individuals. In our gut we think we can handle something, but logic dictates otherwise.
I drove to their house. We chatted. Discussed the hip and knee and how both were doing physically and emotionally. The ladder beckoned.
I ascended confidently. Popped the lid open. Pulled the battery out. Replaced it with a new one. Done. Yipppeeeeee. Sealed it back up. Shot the breeze with my buddy for a few more minutes and I was on my way.
The big BUT came later, as the chirp returned at 2:30 a.m. to disturb their sleep patterns again. Dang. Still, another challenge.
The next day after replacing the battery, the chirping started off and on while I was still at the house. Okay, what next? We turned off the power. Nope. We turned the breaker off, then back on. Still a problem. We checked another smoke detector to see if we aligned the battery properly. Still couldn’t figure it out.
Having worked in the security industry in the past, I contacted a friend and colleague for solutions. He suggested all the steps we took, or hit the “reset” button (a suggestion my wife also provided when I called her for my usual new technology-fixing introduction lesson). There was no “reset” button.
My security industry buddy suggested I take a photo of the brand name and unscrew it to take a photo of the connection as well to see if we could cut or disconnect the wiring. In doing so, lo and behold, there were some directions on what to do if the device stopped working.
And, yes, it suggested the steps we took, but there was one more: blow air through the openings in the device. We got a hair dryer, turned it up, and blew air through that sucker for a couple of minutes.
I reconnected everything, clamped the pieces back together. No noise. I crossed my fingers. We waited 15 minutes. Nothing.
The next day we had coffee. Guess what my first question after we grabbed the java was? You know it. “Did the chirping stop?”
“Yup,” was the reply. When you don’t have much knowledge of electronic devices, even a simple fix feels like you designed a project to bring high speed broadband to an under-served community. You get that conqueror feeling.
Part of the joy was overcoming frustration and learning as we went. The rest of the joy was knowing that the directions work. Next time, that’s where we need to start.
The bird-like sound recently kept a friend of mine from his sleep. He has a bad knee, soon to require replacement, and his wife recently had her hip replaced. Neither being able to climb a ladder, they called me to help, not knowing my technological incompetence. Or, maybe he did, and he wanted some laughs.
Whatever it was, he rang me on the cell and asked if I could come over to replace the battery in the smoke detector, as it’s bird-like sound was waking them up in the middle of the night. Despite my inability to master electronics, I jumped at the chance to make a piece of equipment function properly by replacing a battery. Sounded like I could do it.
Of course, nothing ever turns out the way you project it will. That’s why life is filled with curse words and harried individuals. In our gut we think we can handle something, but logic dictates otherwise.
I drove to their house. We chatted. Discussed the hip and knee and how both were doing physically and emotionally. The ladder beckoned.
I ascended confidently. Popped the lid open. Pulled the battery out. Replaced it with a new one. Done. Yipppeeeeee. Sealed it back up. Shot the breeze with my buddy for a few more minutes and I was on my way.
The big BUT came later, as the chirp returned at 2:30 a.m. to disturb their sleep patterns again. Dang. Still, another challenge.
The next day after replacing the battery, the chirping started off and on while I was still at the house. Okay, what next? We turned off the power. Nope. We turned the breaker off, then back on. Still a problem. We checked another smoke detector to see if we aligned the battery properly. Still couldn’t figure it out.
Having worked in the security industry in the past, I contacted a friend and colleague for solutions. He suggested all the steps we took, or hit the “reset” button (a suggestion my wife also provided when I called her for my usual new technology-fixing introduction lesson). There was no “reset” button.
My security industry buddy suggested I take a photo of the brand name and unscrew it to take a photo of the connection as well to see if we could cut or disconnect the wiring. In doing so, lo and behold, there were some directions on what to do if the device stopped working.
And, yes, it suggested the steps we took, but there was one more: blow air through the openings in the device. We got a hair dryer, turned it up, and blew air through that sucker for a couple of minutes.
I reconnected everything, clamped the pieces back together. No noise. I crossed my fingers. We waited 15 minutes. Nothing.
The next day we had coffee. Guess what my first question after we grabbed the java was? You know it. “Did the chirping stop?”
“Yup,” was the reply. When you don’t have much knowledge of electronic devices, even a simple fix feels like you designed a project to bring high speed broadband to an under-served community. You get that conqueror feeling.
Part of the joy was overcoming frustration and learning as we went. The rest of the joy was knowing that the directions work. Next time, that’s where we need to start.