• AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    I’ve lived in a place with a fire alarm system like that, but the beep is because the backup battery is flat or the unit needs to be replaced.

    Most smoke detectors are essentially a small radioactive lump with a Geiger counter next to it; if smoke gets in between it blocks the radiation and if the number of radiation “hits” falls below a threshold in a set time period the alarm goes off. So, as radioactive things have a half life, there’s a point where the radiation emitted falls below the original threshold and you need to replace it. We fucked around with the batteries in ours for ages assuming one of them was low, but eventually replaced the detector itself and the beeping stopped.

    • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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      13 days ago

      Nope these ones did it from the get go. We asked about it when they got installed, it was a feature to let you know they were operating properly. I really to this day don’t know why it was like that.

      It wasn’t a loud beep, when the TV was on, you couldn’t even hear it. I only heard it when it was quiet in the house, especially when I wanted to sleep.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          It’s the canary in a coal mine system. Once you no longer hear the beep, RIP

          • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zip
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            12 days ago

            Terribly idea, honestly… Something like that quickly becomes background noise and most of us won’t notice when it stops happening for a while. Better to make a positive alert that there’s a sync issue than a negative alert regularly that all’s well

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          I’m going to call all of my friends and family at 3 am to tell them everything is fine and they don’t need to worry, and should go back to bed.

      • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Sounds maddening!

        Mostly I was posting the information above in case someone else has a beeping fire alarm system as it might be like our one and not like yours. I can’t imagine that one took off!