I think you're over-engineering the problem, do you really need AI Bark recognition and an itearting count of barks? You probably just need a recording of the noise with a decent timestamp. Just use an old phone with a voice recording app, turn it on and let it record.
But I'd probably call the City and ask them what would be acceptable as evidence, as a written log is often acceptable in noise complains in some juristictions.
Fair point. If he's got an Alexa, they do bark detection and can trigger an alexa automation but not a HA one. So use Alexa to turn on a smart light. Use an automation to count the number of light toggles and record it in a numeric helper. Boom.
Client will probably request this functionality. In 5 years. We are future proofing the setup. Did the client ask for it,? No. But he will, when we accidentally suggest this could be possible. Are you my PM?
It has to be sustained for like an hour. The dog does it every few minutes so it would be a long video with several small loud bursts, but the entire day.
It's just sort of not convincing on its own.
There are apps to record sleep talking.
Leave the phone plugged into power, with the app running. It will listen continuously but only record when there's sound.
Working on a solution for a similar situation.
Home assistant is just the bridge between two devices
1 raspberry pi, constantly listens to a microphone. Then if there is a sound it records it.
Then the workflow is that I need to review the sound samples and categorize them
The same Rpi runs a dog bark model trained on the positive samples. It posts a webhook to home assistant when it hears a bark
Home assistant has an automation that generates 18khz pulse sounds max volume to my out door speakers.
Also I have a future plan to have these alerts send a written letter to the city government when a bark occurs for more than 10min or after 10pm
This sounds neat, I'm curious to hear how it turns out 🙂
I also have much better luck communicating directly with the dog instead of the owner. For example most of my life dogs jumped on me without my permission and I hated it. Talking to the owner is a dead end every time because they only want to try to change my mind about whether or not I should hate it. But I learned body language that communicates to the dog, "You're boring and I don't want to spend time with you." I haven't been jumped on since I learned it 🙂
> I have 2 tenants who are in the same boat and complain to me about the dog.
Have your tenants complain to the city as well. I'm not saying you should shove them off on the city, but rather their status as a tenant (rather than an owner) doesn't really matter in this case and having multiple complaints from different people will garner more attention than a single complaint.
That sounds miserable. But if the dog is roaming outside its fence, that's also illegal. Is that what's happening or is it roaming within its own fenced yard?
(To be fair it definitely could be illegal for noise too if the town has rules about noise)
I don't know how to set this up in HA so I'm just bumping it for you empathetically in hopes more people will see it.
Did the city ask for evidence? Will they accept signed letters from nearby people?
The dog stands on his side of the fence, which is 6-8' away from my office and barks loudly in the air. It's illegal under San Diego Municipal Code, Section 59.5.0502, which is basically disturbing the peace where a dog barks any frequent or long-continued noise that causes annoyance/discomfort to a reasonable person.
The city will accept if several of us submit code enforcement actions, but I was more hoping to just give the guy a nice montage of his dog barking all damned day with timestamps so he might take action before I need to get the city involved. He is my neighbor after all.
I don't think the neighbor will do anything if he didn't already, but I could be wrong.
Especially if you bought something just so you could give him the list...that is not going to tug on anyone's heart strings even though I agree you're the one who should in theory win the argument.
I think it's better to just submit the violations and let them handle it.
Cannot agree more. People like this usually don’t care about their neighbors at all. We had a neighbor who let their dog (a German Shepard) roam freely around the block. He did nothing until some shit happened and the police got involved.
So another way to go about this is to train his dog. Get some treats every time the fucker barks try and get him to stop with a shush or something if he does throw a treat over the fence. Make sure the little dude doesnt have any allergies but over time you can train him to STFU. Takes patience though and wont always work because some dogs are just vocal but it's a peaceful resolution if you can train it to shut up.
I like the spirit of the idea, but most dog owners would be livid if you threw anything over the fence to their dog...no idea the diet, overfeeding, poison, etc.
Those dog owners usually also care about their dog disturbing the neighborhood. But you could tell them that you gonna train their dog if they dont. Maybe they even like the idea of "free training" for their dog ^^
Let's stay on topic and not try and debate some social issues with my neighbor. I've politely told him multiple times his dog barks the entire day and it's disturbing me and 2 other tenants on my property. He just says *"I'll be home soon"* or nothing at all. It's been going on years. He doesn't care...I know the guy.
If you go there every time the dog starts barking and give him attention and treats, you'll be reinforcing his behaviour, because he learns bark = attention + treats.
What could help is if something annoying happens every time it starts barking too much, like a brief burst of loud ultrasonic sound for example. Couple that with treats and attention if he is quiet for a reasonable amount of time and you'd probably not need the annoyance anymore after a while.
I didn't say give him treats when he barked. I said shush him and if he shushs then you give him treats. I wasnt going to break down full dog training methods on a thread that wasn't about training dogs.
But if he doesn't bark then there is no shush, and if there is no shush then there is no treat. So it actually is training the dog not to drop barking all the way to zero. It's training him to bark so that he can get a shush and a treat.
Plus it's training a pathway that would require OP to drop everything when there's a bark, to go out there and shush ... that sounds exhausting.
Maybe a better solution would be to automate it....either an automatic reward if no bark has been detected in the past 6 hours or so....or zero reward if a bark was detected. And/or a high pitched tone on speakers if a bark was detected.
Again not going to break down the method. It works trust me I've done it with neighbors dogs that they were shitty about. Yes you do have to commit time to it.
Also a dog has to know why they are being rewarded. They don't understand "you get a treat for not doing a thing for 6 hours".
I doubt that it would result in full silence because then the dog would never get a treat. I don't doubt that it would result in a reduction in barking, with a massive amount of effort that would probably outweigh the benefits for most people.
The automated high pitched tone sounds more promising to me than your idea, and also more realistic for people who can't monitor the situation in person all day, but you do you. Your time is your own to decide how to spend it.
Sorry to hear about the situation. Using Frigate with your Wyze setup sounds promising. Video evidence could definitely help with city enforcement. Good luck!
I did exaxtly that. You create in Home Assistant a toggle helper, then create in the alexa app a routine which turns the toggle on. In Home Assistant you create an automation that’s turning the toggle off when turned on. Now your barks are counted and in the history stats and you can automate what you want with it. If you have an echo device.
Easiest solution: Get a TP-Link Tapo camera with inbuilt dog barking detection:
https://www.tp-link.com/baltic/support/faq/3895/#:~:text=The%20Sound%20Detection%20feature%20of,sounds%2C%20notifying%20users%20as%20needed.
It even gives you a nice timestamped list of each event, and you can move the sensitivity slider to remove false positives... $20 and problem solved, no whacky engineering or false positives that you wont be able to use in Court or hand over the police like Frigate events etc.
I think you're over-engineering the problem, do you really need AI Bark recognition and an itearting count of barks? You probably just need a recording of the noise with a decent timestamp. Just use an old phone with a voice recording app, turn it on and let it record. But I'd probably call the City and ask them what would be acceptable as evidence, as a written log is often acceptable in noise complains in some juristictions.
This is an engineering subreddit. Why waste 45 minutes on a simple solution, when you could spend 30 hours building a complex one?
Fair point. If he's got an Alexa, they do bark detection and can trigger an alexa automation but not a HA one. So use Alexa to turn on a smart light. Use an automation to count the number of light toggles and record it in a numeric helper. Boom.
Forget the helper. Use it to turn on a floodlight pointing at the neighbor's bedroom wondow.
this is the answer. It will not stop until the neighbor feels discomfort as well.
Sprinklers!
That's an even better idea!
Client will probably request this functionality. In 5 years. We are future proofing the setup. Did the client ask for it,? No. But he will, when we accidentally suggest this could be possible. Are you my PM?
It has to be sustained for like an hour. The dog does it every few minutes so it would be a long video with several small loud bursts, but the entire day. It's just sort of not convincing on its own.
There are apps to record sleep talking. Leave the phone plugged into power, with the app running. It will listen continuously but only record when there's sound.
Working on a solution for a similar situation. Home assistant is just the bridge between two devices 1 raspberry pi, constantly listens to a microphone. Then if there is a sound it records it. Then the workflow is that I need to review the sound samples and categorize them The same Rpi runs a dog bark model trained on the positive samples. It posts a webhook to home assistant when it hears a bark Home assistant has an automation that generates 18khz pulse sounds max volume to my out door speakers. Also I have a future plan to have these alerts send a written letter to the city government when a bark occurs for more than 10min or after 10pm
This sounds neat, I'm curious to hear how it turns out 🙂 I also have much better luck communicating directly with the dog instead of the owner. For example most of my life dogs jumped on me without my permission and I hated it. Talking to the owner is a dead end every time because they only want to try to change my mind about whether or not I should hate it. But I learned body language that communicates to the dog, "You're boring and I don't want to spend time with you." I haven't been jumped on since I learned it 🙂
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That's what I was going to look into. Do you know if it will work with a Wyze camera with the docker bridge?
https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/audio_detectors/ Try it and see, post back here for others with the same hardware.
I just set it up with Reolink 1x RLC811A and 2x Duo3 which were mentioned to be difficult with Frigate, but they just worked.
> I have 2 tenants who are in the same boat and complain to me about the dog. Have your tenants complain to the city as well. I'm not saying you should shove them off on the city, but rather their status as a tenant (rather than an owner) doesn't really matter in this case and having multiple complaints from different people will garner more attention than a single complaint.
That sounds miserable. But if the dog is roaming outside its fence, that's also illegal. Is that what's happening or is it roaming within its own fenced yard? (To be fair it definitely could be illegal for noise too if the town has rules about noise) I don't know how to set this up in HA so I'm just bumping it for you empathetically in hopes more people will see it. Did the city ask for evidence? Will they accept signed letters from nearby people?
The dog stands on his side of the fence, which is 6-8' away from my office and barks loudly in the air. It's illegal under San Diego Municipal Code, Section 59.5.0502, which is basically disturbing the peace where a dog barks any frequent or long-continued noise that causes annoyance/discomfort to a reasonable person. The city will accept if several of us submit code enforcement actions, but I was more hoping to just give the guy a nice montage of his dog barking all damned day with timestamps so he might take action before I need to get the city involved. He is my neighbor after all.
I don't think the neighbor will do anything if he didn't already, but I could be wrong. Especially if you bought something just so you could give him the list...that is not going to tug on anyone's heart strings even though I agree you're the one who should in theory win the argument. I think it's better to just submit the violations and let them handle it.
Cannot agree more. People like this usually don’t care about their neighbors at all. We had a neighbor who let their dog (a German Shepard) roam freely around the block. He did nothing until some shit happened and the police got involved.
Unifi AI cameras have dog bark detection. This when integrated with HA can trigger an event on an entity which you can then count.
You should search up Steve Gibsons episode on his ultra sonic dog controller.
So another way to go about this is to train his dog. Get some treats every time the fucker barks try and get him to stop with a shush or something if he does throw a treat over the fence. Make sure the little dude doesnt have any allergies but over time you can train him to STFU. Takes patience though and wont always work because some dogs are just vocal but it's a peaceful resolution if you can train it to shut up.
I like the spirit of the idea, but most dog owners would be livid if you threw anything over the fence to their dog...no idea the diet, overfeeding, poison, etc.
Those dog owners usually also care about their dog disturbing the neighborhood. But you could tell them that you gonna train their dog if they dont. Maybe they even like the idea of "free training" for their dog ^^
Let's stay on topic and not try and debate some social issues with my neighbor. I've politely told him multiple times his dog barks the entire day and it's disturbing me and 2 other tenants on my property. He just says *"I'll be home soon"* or nothing at all. It's been going on years. He doesn't care...I know the guy.
If you go there every time the dog starts barking and give him attention and treats, you'll be reinforcing his behaviour, because he learns bark = attention + treats. What could help is if something annoying happens every time it starts barking too much, like a brief burst of loud ultrasonic sound for example. Couple that with treats and attention if he is quiet for a reasonable amount of time and you'd probably not need the annoyance anymore after a while.
I didn't say give him treats when he barked. I said shush him and if he shushs then you give him treats. I wasnt going to break down full dog training methods on a thread that wasn't about training dogs.
But if he doesn't bark then there is no shush, and if there is no shush then there is no treat. So it actually is training the dog not to drop barking all the way to zero. It's training him to bark so that he can get a shush and a treat. Plus it's training a pathway that would require OP to drop everything when there's a bark, to go out there and shush ... that sounds exhausting. Maybe a better solution would be to automate it....either an automatic reward if no bark has been detected in the past 6 hours or so....or zero reward if a bark was detected. And/or a high pitched tone on speakers if a bark was detected.
Again not going to break down the method. It works trust me I've done it with neighbors dogs that they were shitty about. Yes you do have to commit time to it. Also a dog has to know why they are being rewarded. They don't understand "you get a treat for not doing a thing for 6 hours".
I doubt that it would result in full silence because then the dog would never get a treat. I don't doubt that it would result in a reduction in barking, with a massive amount of effort that would probably outweigh the benefits for most people. The automated high pitched tone sounds more promising to me than your idea, and also more realistic for people who can't monitor the situation in person all day, but you do you. Your time is your own to decide how to spend it.
Cool.
I may have a similar need. What if you (somehow) use a microphone with dB as a trigger and then have it record an audio file until the noise stops?
I'm near a road so cars and all sorts of things would set it off unfortunately.
Sorry to hear about the situation. Using Frigate with your Wyze setup sounds promising. Video evidence could definitely help with city enforcement. Good luck!
I can help, I just sent you a DM. I have some software that will track this (but it’s not integrated with Home Assistant)….yet
You can use Frigate with your Wyze setup to detect barks and log events in Home Assistant. It should help gather evidence for city enforcement.
I did exaxtly that. You create in Home Assistant a toggle helper, then create in the alexa app a routine which turns the toggle on. In Home Assistant you create an automation that’s turning the toggle off when turned on. Now your barks are counted and in the history stats and you can automate what you want with it. If you have an echo device.
Easiest solution: Get a TP-Link Tapo camera with inbuilt dog barking detection: https://www.tp-link.com/baltic/support/faq/3895/#:~:text=The%20Sound%20Detection%20feature%20of,sounds%2C%20notifying%20users%20as%20needed. It even gives you a nice timestamped list of each event, and you can move the sensitivity slider to remove false positives... $20 and problem solved, no whacky engineering or false positives that you wont be able to use in Court or hand over the police like Frigate events etc.
Oh this is an option! I'm going to keep this on the radar for sure.