Noise Protection for Short Term and Vacation Rentals | Hacker News Reader

Noise Protection for Short Term and Vacation Rentals

noiseaware.io

57 pointswehadfun87 comments

I've been using the Point(https://minut.com/), which is half the price and no annual fee.

I mostly use it for temperature/humidity sensing, but it also has sound level logging/alerts.

NetAtmo [0] does the same thing as well -- full weather sensor suite, similar pricepoint to NoiseAware, no annual subscription.

[0] https://www.netatmo.com/product/weather/weatherstation

Considering this is recording (or at lest intercepting and processing in some form) audio in a place where most people have an expectation of privacy, I assume you have to inform the renter that this is on and monitoring....

Almost certainly illegal in my state if the tenant is not aware.

I'd fine it humorous if this gets shut down as illegal if Airbnb units continue unchecked.

I wonder how many people actually have cameras in their rentals and don't tell anyone?

That's pretty high risk on the host's part. If your guest happens to discover the camera and informs the police, at least where I live you would be looking at a pretty hefty fine and possibly even a short prison term + felony criminal record.

It doesn't help much if you are mostly spying on foreign tourist guests, since the act of visual spying of a private household is itself a serious crime - not only as a tort against a victim, but a criminal offence likely of interest to the public prosecutor.

There's no need to record audio for this to work.

It's crazy to me that we've moved so far away from privacy-considerate technology that people have begun to assume we can't measure volume without "recording" and "processing" audio.

Unless I get a government certificate saying so, I won't trust that your butt-connected volume-measuring device isn't sending recorded audio, or that it won't start at some point after a trivial software update.

Actually assuming it won't is something I'd consider naivety / lack of tech-savviness.

Or at the very least, listen for certain keywords and send that data back to HQ. No need to record for that either.

The problem is not only not recording audio, but also not accidentally recording enough data to reconstruct words spoken. Silence detection on a sufficiently short timescale might allow you to guess sentences.

Don't worry, they thought about that:

Guests' privacy is always protected. Our patent pending technology ensures that no content is recorded

It's patented, so it must be good.

Sarcasm aside, I really wonder what's in that patent... I mean it must (should) exist, otherwise it should be "pending".

Given that variable bit-rate VoIP can reveal words spoken from bitrate alone[1], I would be very cautious about their claims.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/eavesdropping...

I doubt their "signal processing" involves anything more than a microphone and a peak detector.

A more practical side channel attack would probably be through radiated emissions over the mains power. However if you're willing to go that far, a laser microphone is much more effective and simpler.

Depending on how wide is the peak detection window, they might send enough data to detect how long consecutive words are. I have a vague impression that I've read once that this, together with a language model, can be used to guess what's being spoken ~10% of the time or so.

I hope it isn't recording audio. That would cost more than just a simple peak detector circuit sampled at 1 kHz or so.

Given the markup they have on these devices (like someone else pointed out, it's $10 in parts DIY, probably much less if mass-produced), I don't think they care...

I'm a hardware engineer and grasp fully how simple this is. But cost to make in a garage != cost to make at scale. Bringing hardware to market is expensive. You are forgetting mold tooling costs, factory fees, prototype costs, profit, etc. The fixed NRE costs can go to zero at mass scale, but if they intend to only sell 1000 or so (probably a good estimate), they need to account for it somehow.

Except you would need a lot more server power on the back end to handle the audio. It would cost more.

Sending an SPL every few seconds is a lot less bandwidth. It's engineering overkill to do anything else.

For simple SPL (Sound Pressure Level. Literally, loudness), there's no processing of audio. It's doing little more than monitoring the voltage of the microphone. Voltage spikes above X millivolts too many times in X timeframe, send out an alert.

What do you think a digital audio file is? It's a normalized history of the voltage output of a microphone.

And while this device says it doesn't record, it doesn't say "it can't record" and it doesn't say "it cannot stream the data elsewhere".

It should only trigger when loud enough for the neighbors to hear, which seems like a situation where you don't have an expectation of privacy.

Probably not recording - just reading volume from a microphone and transmitting a "level". That's more plausible because it is simpler to code, requires less upstream bandwidth, and tallies with their "We can't record" statement.

Of course it would be easy to build something like this yourself, if you fancied a challenge. A mic-input, an ESP8266 chip, and you've got yourself an instructibles-project!

I assume hardware wise this is a cheap microphone, a microcontroller, and a wifi chip? Software wise, they have a data logger and some sort of notification push? What justifies the $150, and the $200/year subscription? I don't see those prices being sustainable.

That nobody else is doing it.

If people pay, that is the justification. Pricing is, shall we say, not a science.

Can't you say the same thing about any piece of software as well? It costs next to $0 in bandwidth to download an app or program. Why should the price be higher than $0?

Hardware costs a lot of money to develop and manufacture. There have been a lot of posts on HN recently about the price of hardware. Niche hardware like this doesn't cost next to nothing when made in small quantities. All the fixed NREs (all the prototype costs, the plastic mold tooling, any upfront factory fees, etc.) have to be amortized over the few units sold. And that is just breaking even. Selling goods at cost is a tricky business model. It makes sense to add in a little profit.

If you don't like the price, then you probably shouldn't buy it. If enough people agree with you, they will either change their price or go out of business.

> Niche hardware like this doesn't cost next to nothing when made in small quantities.

You could use some off the shelf components like an ESP8266 or ESP32 module to dramatically reduce your cost. A hand full a discrete components, an electret microphone, auto gain amplifier, and a voltage regulator aren't going to set you back more than $10. A custom PCB is going to be $5 per unit max. The BOM is easily under $20 for a limited run of 10 to 20 units.

The most expensive things are going to be the enclosure and assembly. If you find an off the self enclosure then your costs drop considerably.

You could have a working prototype cobbled together in a day.

Your one day prototype will costs thousands to bring to market. Lets look at just the electronics. Have you priced out FCC certification? The wifi module might be already certified, but the whole product isn't. That is $5k to $10k minimum for US only. It also plugs into mains, which means it might need UL certification to it won't burn down someone's house.

Your $20 BOM just gets you a board and loose components, not a complete product. The cost of a complete product is called "cost of goods sold" or COGS and includes things like assembly, testing, and shipping, etc. Even if $20 was your COGS, how much would you have to charge to make a profit? It all depends on how many you sell. If you only intend to sell 1000 or so (likely the case here), you need to charge accordingly.

> The wifi module might be already certified, but the whole product isn't. That is $5k to $10k minimum for US only.

If you're using Pre-certified modules then you can qualify the remainder of your product as unintentional radiator and the FCC certification cost is $1k-2k.

> It also plugs into mains, which means it might need UL certification to it won't burn down someone's house.

UL certification isn't mandatory, UL isn't a government organization and there's no legal requirement to have your device certified by them.

> Even if $20 was your COGS, how much would you have to charge to make a profit? It all depends on how many you sell. If you only intend to sell 1000 or so (likely the case here), you need to charge accordingly.

My point is that $150 plus an annual subscription fee is steep for such a simple product. Per unit cost on a very limited run (e.g. 1000 units) doesn't justify a $150 price, especially if you're charging a subscription on top of that.

I've never seen unintentional radiator testing under $5k. What lab does your testing?

UL isn't mandatory, but do you want your product stocked by retailers? You might need it then.

People pay for things according to the value they provide, not the cost to the provider. If this provides $1k/year of value that no other provider can replicate, it is a good deal.

(Thanks patio11 for drumming this into my head!)

I agree it's overpriced.

However don't forget that when selling a product, lots of other costs arise. E.g. you'd need FCC certification (around 10k USD for intentional radiators) and make sure that no other standards are violated (mainly regarding mains voltage). The plastic case mold is another 3-5k. Then some margin for returns, marketing, etc.. It's a niche product, so the fixed costs make up a big part.

If it's popular someone will sell a simple DIY kit for 20$ and an open-source server. But I doubt there's much demand.

Since the WiFi is the only source of emissions, you can avoid FCC certification by using a pre-certified module like an ESP8266 or ESP32 or one of the many offerings from TI.

You cannot skip FCC certification, you can just go through the "simpler" unintentional radiator testing when using pre-certified modules. That's still around 1.5k USD.

Also you can't use custom firmware on a pre-certified module, otherwise you'll still have to do the intentional radiator testing. You control those modules with an external MCU, which is cheap though.

TIs WiFi offering is horribly expensive compared to any ESP8266 based modules, still like 13$ @ 1k units on DigiKey. That's the main reason the latter got so famous.

You need to sell a few hundreds just to get those fixed costs down to a reasonable amount per unit. And then you still have to pay the engineers... Maybe 80-100$ per unit would be more appropriate, but then again I doubt they sell in huge numbers.

I think this seems like a terrible product, here is why:

Call 1:

AirBnB host: "Hey I've just got an alert that the noise level has gone above X decibels"

AirBnB guest: "Oh hmm it looks like the city is jack hammering the street in front of the house."

Call 2:

AirBnB host: "Hey I just got another alert about noise!"

AirBnB guest: "A bunch of fire trucks went by, there's a fire down the street"

Call 3:

AirBnB host: "I just got an alert that you unplugged my noise meter!"

AirBnB guest: "No I didn't but it looks like your internet is down."

While three of these happening consecutively is maybe unlikely just one of them occurring makes both parties uncomfortable and presents an awkward situation. And who is to say what reasonable is? A neighbor can complain even if the noise is under the threshold.

This just feels like nanny-nation to me. The real issue is that if you don't know people well enough to trust them to be respectful towards your neighbors then maybe you shouldn't be renting them your place. And yes the same can be said of renting to a longterm renter as both parties enter into the contract with no prior knowledge of the other but the difference is that long term renters generally have a vested interest in being a considerate neighbor since it is now their home.

I'd just wrap socks around it.

LOL. I didn't see anything in the FAQ bout it being sock-proof? Maybe the second revision with have this feature?

I am suddenly unreasonably angry that this exists. Not because of the product itself, which is clever.

But because this is how normalized the u̶n̶r̶e̶g̶u̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ illegal short term rentals have become, that especially in some tourist-heavy regions are creating long-term housing shortages that displace residents. (See New Orleans, where housing prices have skyrocketed without any commensurate boost in residents' incomes to compensate, and it really is just that homes are being converted into hotels.)

I keep seeing short term rentals blamed for sky rocketing rents. Here in Santa Cruz, the University has grown by about 6-7000 students since when I first got here. The UC itself added maybe about 1k beds in the last 20+ years, some of that by cramming more people into existing rooms (doubles to triples, etc).

The 2-300 short term rentals in/around the city would not make a dent on the availability of housing. (Let's say, 1500 beds). Yes, it will impact price, but there is a larger issue than the rentals themselves.

In this case it is unrestricted growth without building the housing to go with it.

UCSC is an interesting problem.

There are have been serious plans to expand into upper campus - which would destroy some beautiful redwoods which people don't like. But is it better to build an entire new UC campus somewhere else? That seems inefficient - there are already serious resources devoted to that campus and I think that more people experiencing UCSC will lead to a better, more educated, more socially conscious world. Maybe we should just increase capacity and build more housing in upper campus. But by increasing capacity we further increase demand for water in a drought stricken area... We can't win without more water. So maybe we need desalination, but to make that work we need obscene amounts of excess electricity... environmentally and socially conscious growth is hard.

Santa Cruz gets enough rain to sustain itself. However, adding a new reservoir was stopped in the 80s. The area is beautiful, but the same people who preserved a lot of what is special about the place also put policies in place that are destroying it. It's a lack of balance.

Sadly local municipalities can't control the decisions that a given UC makes. UCSC should have had enrollment capped at a sustainable level -- water, housing and traffic. Adding more in upper campus, eh, there is really still only one way in -- no eastern access, etc.

I understand the benefit of exposure to environmental and socially conscious issues, but reality should factor into planning and that should be a lesson as well.

I'm struggling to find a less snarky way to say this because it should be so obvious, but it turns out that real estate issues are frequently unique to their locations.

> are creating long-term housing shortages that displace residents

This could be avoided, if the cities would be willing to allow building more homes in the areas where demand is high. (Usually it's even the same people opposing building new homes and at the same time complaining about the rising prices. Very illogical.)

And suddenly your tourist-y locale is transformed into "just another cityscape."

Not to make light of the need for affordable housing. But, the problem with respect to AirBnB and the like is not simply to "build more."

Zoning, regulations, and such grew up over decades, in response to needs. Not "just because."

AirBnB and the like, as I've commented elsewhere, essentially crowd-source an "end run" around limited resources for enforcement.

Arbitraging short-term rental demand against limited, taxpayer-funded (and often not even supplemented by e.g. hotel taxes that traditional short-term rental establishments have to pay) enforcement.

In my personal experience, I have had an abusive level of disregard for the common welfare exhibited by a few neighbors. Absent effective control, it really can "ruin" a building or a neighborhood.

This has left me with exactly zero sympathy for the AirBnB crowd. Especially after the all-to-frequent horror stories I've read -- thought admittedly, the press and public attention seek the extremes for the sake of sensation. But even just in more level-headed, unpromoted comments here on HN and elsewhere. The "sharing" economy too often takes its advantage by dumping on its surroundings and reducing the quality of life for others.

By all means, build more housing. In a sustainable fashion and enjoyable design. I've advocated for creating regulation and code that requires noise-reducing materials and construction techniques in new construction. Among other things, this could well make shared dwellings more attractive, increasing density and resource efficiency while maintaining aspects of quality of life such as simply having a safely peaceful home.

But don't promote "build more" as a simple sop for the problems AirBnB and unregulated "sharing" bring to the table. Don't turn other people's homes, often against their will, into "the hotel room next door."

>"This could be avoided, if the cities would be willing to allow building more homes in the areas where demand is high."

The OP was using New Orleans as a specific example. And it is good one.

New Orleans has enough housing stock for the residents. In fact the population of New Orleans is only 80% of what it was pre Hurricane Katrina. What they don't have enough housing stock for is the number of AirBnB guests AND residents.

Just using the Bywater in New Orelans as an example. This neighborhood is a traditional working class neighborhood with historically reasonable rents. Lots of local artists and people who work in the restaurant/hospitality industry which is New Orleans main industry. Now the neighborhood is an AirBnB community. You can sit on a front port and watch people with rolling suitcases go by all day. This is housing stock that is no longer available to residents as long term housing.

Meanwhile New Orleans has no shortage of hotels however. Its main income is tourism. The difference is that staying in a hotel is not an option for a New Orleans resident.

> without any commensurate boost in residents' incomes to compensate

Residents have the opportunity to increase their income through short-term rentals.

Well they have to live somewhere during that rental too right?

Occupancy can be shared, or can be reserved for periods when the primary occupant is away. I don't even travel much, but still manage to be away from my home for several entire days out of the year.

Mind you, tourists have no interest in the area I live to begin with, so that is always another good option for curbing interest in AirBnB.

Presumably poorer people (who are most relevant to this topic) won't be traveling that much, and won't have an abundance of space in their homes for a shared occupancy.

While I admit I'm not completely up on all the details of New Orleans specifically, a quick Google search suggests that rent is in line what what I would expect to find around my area, where tourists have little interest in visiting (small farming town of no importance), and isn't exactly flush with cash either (median income is similar).

Surprisingly, although less concerning to the poor, ownership prices don't even seem very expensive in New Orleans. If anything, less than you would find where I am. Now I'm starting to wonder where the idea that costs skyrocketed is coming from? Perhaps local prices were actually heavily depressed due to some natural/economic disasters and have finally started to return to what that income level can support through recovery from those events; AirBnB having little to do with it?

That's a bit of straw-man argument - AirBnB is perfectly legal in many cities and unregulated (and thus not strictly 'illegal') in many others.

It's like when people still refer to Ubers in San Francisco as 'illegal taxis'. There's nothing illegal about them, they're regulated by the California PUC.

And strictly illegal in places like NYC.

Edit: The majority of uses that I have encountered of both people who use and list on AirBNB in NYC are of the strictly illegal kind.

AirBnB is legal in NYC. What's illegal is renting an entire apartment out for less than 30 days, AirBnB or not.

Hardly, there are a variety of instances where it's perfectly legal in NYC. Not the most common instances, but they very much exist.

I am with you. I am fortunate enough to own my own place but up until a few months ago I was living in an apartment.

Not only are there no affordable 'starter' homes left near the Austin city center due to idle capital buying them all up and turning them into AirBnBs, one of the tenants decided to AirBnB their apartment when they were moving out.

Gotta love paying sky-high rent _and_ having to deal with a raucous party still going at 4AM on a Thursday.

Uh, that's not idle capital at play in Austin, that's a gigantic influx of California transplants that have been coming by the van load even before I left in 2008. Cashing out whatever they could real estate wise made them extremely flush with cash comparatively in Texas. Austin was always on the pricey side but the sprawl effect pretty much made the "unaffordable" circle bump out to a 1 hour commute radius, well, considering how terrible the traffic is that's not saying much...anyway, hope the place works out for ya.

That ultimately implies that you want less tourism.

I think it is more than just short term rentals. It is this idea that a home represents an investment, a way to make money. People around me who buy a new house for the first time start talking about how they can't wait for it to keep increasing in value, however prior to their purchase they couldn't wait for them to decrease.

The idea that homes are just another path to making money needs to end, they are supposed to be a home for people to live in. This is what I believe is driving up prices so much these days.

I've heard this argument a lot and I'll never understand it. Do you get angry about hotels and traditional Bed-and-Breakfasts too?

>"I am suddenly unreasonably angry"

I don't believe your anger is unreasonable.

I always figured that the hidden camera that the AirBnB host uses to spy on me already had a microphone so they can monitor my noise level directly....

This is ripe for a Chinese rip-off at those prices.

I imagine that you could build a functional equivalent with an ESP8266, a power adapater, and a Twilio account - no server required, since you should be able to measure volume directly on the ESP8266 itself. The parts would cost you less than $20 - probably less than $10.

NodeMCU (basically ESP8266 + USB-to-serial and power over USB) is ~$3, if you can find a reliable USB charger for less than $7, then this project will definitely cost less than $10 in parts.

One that emits an ear-splitting siren if the noise gets too high? Much cheaper and more convenient than reporting to the owner. The kids will get the point pretty quickly.

Or they'll just put a thick towel on it and continue the party.

Or simply unplug it.

They charge a $200 annual fee

That's pricy...

It's insanely cheap if you're one of the many "landlords" that have turned their properties into AirBnB-only money printing machines. In NYC/SF a 1-2 night stay covers the cost for this easy.

Crazy. I pay good money to watch/listen to people on hidden cameras.

Seems like I should disrupt the smoke-alarm-for-noise industry by creating an efficient block-chain marketplace to connect voyeuristic perverts with sharing-economy-landlords.

Everybody wins!

It's a stupid simple dashboard. A dollar a month per sensor is the very most I would consider, with maybe a minimum $20/year.

What does it mean to be a "HomeAway Official Partner"?

I find it hilarious that this product exists. For so many reasons. A noise meter for your (most likely illegaly) rented apartment so your neighbors aren't bothered. I wonder how else that could be fixed... Oh right, regulations on noise and distance to housing, which every hotel has to follow, but AirBnb's litlle grey area abuse scheme miraculously gets to avoid it.

Regulations don't make things not be noisy. They mandate that things not be noisy. Then someone has to go make sure that when things are getting noisy, it stops. In a hotel, that'll be the hotel manager when the other guests or the neighbours complain. This is a proactive means to avoid that.

I mean, it's not like saying "Don't make a huge amount of noise in my apartment" enforces that you can't. You can still do it.

Except you're going to have a terrible time building a new hotel complex in the middle of already existing apartments. The bill for sound insulation is going to be massive. And if you get inspected and it turns your you are not within the regulations, the fine is going to be a fun one too. Therefore, new hotels are built somewhat isolated from existing housing, or take up an entire building.

As opposed to a random person just renting his apartment and getting a tap on the wrist eventually.

This feels like it can just be implemented by an Alexa skill? Would anyone be interested?

How? Don't you need to wake Alexa for the skill to work? What happens if they unplug the Alexa?

What happens if they unplug this thing? "Sorry I needed the outlet and this thing looked kinda useless."

Put a towel over it.

haha, why is the best comment at the bottom of the page?

My comments have been forever anchored to the botttom by the mods/admins. :)

Is there a hand held gadget I can use when I first enter my rental to determine and locate listening devices and/or video?

I'll buy or gift one.

Well, that's creepy as fuck. If you're going to do this, why not also go ahead and don't rent your space out.

Example of something nobody needs.

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