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Comment by thelean12 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone with a car alarm enabled in a city is just straight up rude and inconsiderate. I can't imagine the mindset involved for someone to put a device outside someone's bedroom window that will somewhat randomly start blasting loud sounds at all hours of the night.

I'd support legislation making it illegal. Why are car alarms exempt from noise ordinances?

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I live in a city and also own a converted van. The van typically has little of value inside it unless I am traveling. This van has an aftermarket alarm. I had this alarm installed after a nasty break-in in Vancouver BC which reminded me never to leave nice things in a vehicle. It makes some noise itself, but also comes with a fob and app that both also make noise. It has served me on at least one occasion where someone opened a door to nose around. I was alerted and ran outside to check on the vehicle but they had taken off. This alarm also caused someone who was walking their dog to walk over to investigate, though the potential thief took off even before they got there.

They could have taken my registration papers or the cheap / second hand cookware, stove etc. Which would have been a pain and cost not a lot, but some money to replace. I don't have room in my apartment for all of these items, so I rely on the alarm to keep my things safe. Especially when I am out of town without my van.

The article does mention valuables as a special case, but I would like to highlight this case and argue that these "valuables" are part and parcel to the function of this vehicle and that it's not practical for me to remove them, making the alarm essential to the vehicle's operation.

However, I do agree with the sentiment that most shock/vibration/etc. Sensors should not trigger an audible alarm. The only really useful trigger is a door opening. I'm not sure this is necessarily true, but is definitely true of the aftermarket alarm options on the market when I wash shopping for an alarm.

I'll also add as a final note that the police (both in Vancouver and where I live) will simply not help you recover stolen property and are 100% useless as far as property crime goes. They are either too busy or too apathetic. For items like what I have in my van it is of course not really worth their time, but I've also had a motorcycle stolen _which was driving around with my plates for over a year before it was *crashed*_. As a citizen I am definitely on my own with this stuff which is a good lesson to learn while you have insurance.

It'd be cool if the alarm turned on the stereo with a loop that says (loud enough for the thief to hear but not loud enough to be obnoxious to other people) "The owner is being notified you're in their van" (or to that effect).

This is a good idea.

I've had lots of ideas about alarms and how they could be better after that break in.

I have a fence electrifier that I'd love to get set up but I don't want to fry anything inside the van.

Another idea is something that sets off something _extremely_ loud inside, like a firework.

Sadly the off the shelf part does the job well enough that I will probably never invest much time tinkering. I've asked the vendor about public APIs but they are not interested.

If someone builds a simple car alarm kit with cell connectivity I will gleefully rip out the old system.

Car alarms should go off inside the car.

I think there are some laws - you're not allowed to have an alarm that wails for hours on end for example, it's gotta stop in a few minutes.

Even if it goes off for 1 second it basically ruins sleep.

You can always vote in someone who believes in basic policing

Marched in a band. We set off so many car alarms during practice.

Have also seen two cars next to each other that keep setting each other off. That was not a fun night.

Imagine this, but coming from an industrial building. During the lockdown, it seems like the office space across the street from my house lacked maintenance/security people. There were times when an alarm at the building would go off, and literally stay on for a day or more. Maybe they forgot to pay their ADT bill...

This happens to houses in my area all the time. Either the owner is on vacation, or has moved out, but it hasn't sold or the new owner hasn't moved in, and some alarm or other starts going off. Sometimes it's the annoying smoke alarm "replace the battery beep" once per minute. Sometimes it's something more annoying. I usually call the police or fire department and let them know. That's the only way I've found to make it stop.

How poorly built are the houses near you if you can hear the "replace the battery" beep from a home that is closed up while an owner is on vacation?

America. There aren't sane minimums to the building code here. If you're lucky enough to be in a state ravaged by earthquakes the minimums require it to not fall over during one but still don't properly address acoustic isolation.

Where do you live? Among granite castles? Smoke alarms are loud. Sometimes I can hear one go off three houses down. American houses are not very sound proof.

The “battery down” beep isn’t usually the same as the alarm in my experience

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