Fed up with his neighbor's loud racquetball game, an Argentinian developer decided to take matters into his own hands with the help of artificial intelligence.
Ronnie Bandini spent every night listening loudly to his neighbors' favorite music, reggaeton. While many might ask their neighbors to turn down the music, Bandini solved his problem in a different way, using artificial intelligence to invent a machine called “Reggaeton Be Con.”
It's a box equipped with a microphone, a small computer and an algorithm that detects when a reggaeton song is playing and interrupts the speaker it's playing.
Bandini shared her story in a video that went viral. Not only does he show the device in action, he explains how he built it, using off-the-shelf materials and code he programmed himself.
It claims to have first trained an artificial intelligence (AI) model to recognize specific reggaeton songs. To do this, he downloaded representative parts of the category and uploaded them to the machine learning development platform Edge Impulse.
Once the AI is ready, it's time for the hardware.The developer points out that it includes a 3D-printed front and a small OLED screen in a metal case. Inside he placed a Raspberry Pi 3 on which he loaded the AI model he had trained.
To detect music, he added a microphone, wrote Python code to monitor it and send the sounds to recognition software.
“If the result exceeds the authentication level, say 75% – it turns out to be my neighbor's preferred species, the machine sends many requests and packets. [μέσω Bluetooth] With the speaker, I have its MAC address to mute it or at least mute it,” explains Bandini in a video posted on social media.
Its inspiration came from TV-B-Gone, a remote control launched in 2004 capable of turning off televisions in public spaces such as shops, bars and waiting rooms. It was developed by American hacker and inventor Mitch Altman.
“I understand it's illegal to jam your neighbor's speakers, but on the other hand it's definitely illegal to listen to reggaeton every day at 9am,” Bandini added in his video. His invention has gone viral, but he refuses to commercialize it.
With information from Euronews.com
