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Advice for improving a Ultrasonic Dog Bark Stopper

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AZICURN

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Let me start by saying I am not an electrical engineer, I am a nurse. However, electronics has always been a hobby of mine. I know some...but not enough. On that note...I also have two dogs that bark...and a neighbor that barks more. We have tried so many things, but the ultrasonic dog bark machine seemed to work the best. I am just trying to improve on the function by making it a little more dynamic (adjustable volume, sensitivity, frequency, etc.)

So I designed and built this circuit. It works pretty well. I have been testing it with 6v (4 AA's) and it generates a pretty loud squeal. (I intentionally made the oscillator adjustable to within hearing range for testing purposes.) However, the speaker is a piezo tweeter GT-1005 similar to a KSN1005, and I feel I could really get some more power out of it. Any help improving this circuit, particularly the output would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

Circuit description: Electret microphone signal amplified by lm386 trips monostable 555 (timer) which activates 555 oscillator. Output fed to Tip31 NPN.
 

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Hate to break the news, but you have to train the dogs to respond to the noise. You might get their attention briefly, but eventually they'll realize it's not important. Fortunately, my Labrador isn't a huge barker, but all they really need is for you to come and tell them everything is okay. You don't want them to get too excited, so do join in, by barking loudly yourself, "SHUT THE F--- UP!". They like to be useful, and need a job. It's good to alert you sometimes, but they also know it's not a good idea to draw attention to themselves. Just depends how you train them. Some people, yell, throw things, beat, kick, and other nasty things, and the dog figures he's not doing his job well, so he barks more, and louder, until he's afraid to do anything, starts biting people out of frustration.

I keep my dog in the house with me, and if he's in the front of the house, I'll call him. If he stays and keeps barking, I'll go see what's up, tell him he's a good dog, and that's about the end of it. If there's a cat in the back yard, I open the door for him...

The bark control collars are sadistic, they shock the dog, with every loud noise. Had a neighbor that thought they were great, kept trying to talk me into getting one for my last dog, fortunately his neck was unusually large, Rottweiler-Curr mix. Really felt bad for his poor beagle, everytime one of those thump-thump bass boom cars drove past...
 
Thanks Harvey. However, I have tried so many things. My neighbor goes to bed at like 6pm and expects our dogs to be pretty much silent. I know it's not realistic, but he's a little weird and I'm afraid that he may step things up if they do continue to bark. Noise complaints wouldn't really amount to much that early in the evening (dogs are inside no later than 8pm anyhow) so I would be more afraid he might do something directly to them. My girlfriend and I both work 12 hour shifts, and we don't get home til 7pm. The dogs seem happy, playing with each other. It's not because they are lonely. They bark at other dogs a few yards over and at people walking by. They just do it alot.
When I am home I do play with them, and scold them for barking. They don't bark as much when they know I'm listening and home. It's more when I am at work.
Unfortunately I have tried several things. The citronella collars first. What a mess! Then I did try the shock collars. I wish I had never done that. They worked ok at stopping the barking, but it felt cruel, and even more so when one of my dogs got a wound from the collar. Those things got thrown away.
The neighbor actually gave us an ultrasonic thing that alerts when it detects a bark. It actually worked pretty good. It was immediate, and enough to distract the dogs. Also, it must have been unpleasant enough for them because they would back away from their "barking spot."
The device was pretty primitive. Little room for adjustment. And eventually it got wet and broke anyhow.
I wanted to build something that would simulate that thing (apparently neighbor said he spent 90$ on!) without breaking the bank, and hopefully have enough adjustment to be more lenient as they ease up on the repetitive barking.
 
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I have found that remote detonators and small explosives take the bark right out of them. :D

I can be kind of messy if your shape charge is pointing the wrong way though. :eek:

Or if the cat gets a hold of it and eats part of it first. :p
**broken link removed**
 
Use a modified mosquito zapper and tell the dog to stop barking applying the zapper.

Dogs don't think. They just learn by experience.

So everytime he or she barks and it hurts they'll use the foregoing experience to stop barking.

It doesn't make a big difference if a dog barks or howls, trying to beat the source of your sound.

Boncuk
 
Hate to break the news, but you have to train the dogs to respond to the noise. You might get their attention briefly, but eventually they'll realize it's not important.

I disagree. If you have the sound generator set with the correct pitch and the correct "on" time, it could easily train the dog not to bark. That is why companies make these professionally. I would suggest adjusting the pitch until your dog reacts (in a painful sort of way, not just curious). Then set it so that the noise stays on for 1-2 seconds after your dog barks. This way, every time he/she barks, there is 1-2 seconds of very painful sound that your dog cannot ignore. He/she will eventually associate his or her barking with the painful sound and it should train him/her not to bark.

I have also seen special collars that are designed to do this themselves. They are placed around the dog's neck (duh ;) ), right next to its ears. The volume does not necessarily need to be very loud. I have seen them sold at Wal-Mart for 12 U.S. dollars. I'm not sure where you are located, but there is likely some sort of store near you that sells this type of thing if you are interested. However, I understand it is probably a lot more fun to do it yourself ;) It is completely up to you!
I hope this helps!
Der Strom
 
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I have found that remote detonators and small explosives take the bark right out of them. :D

I can be kind of messy if your shape charge is pointing the wrong way though. :eek:

Or if the cat gets a hold of it and eats part of it first. :p

Hahaha! Oh, because that is SO much less cruel than a shock collar ;) :p
 
The circuit has a TIP31 power transistor driving a resistive speaker but a piezo tweeter has no resistance so the class-A power transistor will do nothing. You need a push-pull stage using an NPN plus a PNP as emitter followers to drive a piezo speaker.
 
Yes. That was the intention of my original post. I was hoping to get some advice on how to increase the output of the circuit I did provide. I does work. It works well. I would like it to work better though.

And again, the method does work on the dogs. I have the circuit above breadboarded on a chair outside right now, and dogs are not barking at all.

I appreciate all the advice on buying devices and dog trainining etc, but really that's not what I was looking for here.
 
This circuit will drive the piezo transducer:
 

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I had a neighbor with a loud barking dog so I put a mic on the fence and a 100 watt amplifier and 4 large speakers. The dog would bark and it came out 10 time louder. The police came and were dumb founded as what to do because my system is not illegal. The barking dog was the problem. After several hours of legal research they decided there was nothing they could do to me. Finally the whole neighbor hood was pissed as hell at that dog finally the owner of the dog got rid of it he didn't like listening to 100 watts of dog barking either.
 
Audioguru,
Thanks again audioguru. I actually did exactly what you said last night, but used a 2n3904 & 2n3906 (only complementary NPN PNP pair I had) and it seemed to be much louder. I also used a small 0.01 uf cap in parallel with the tweeter and it seemed to really help with the distortion/harmonic noise at certain frequencies.

Gary,
That's awesome! and terrible. In my neighborhood, if I put a 100 watt amplifier and 4 large speakers on the fence, I would have 4 flat tires on my truck, eggs/toilet paper/flaming excrement in front of the house, and in a short amount of time -- a stolen amplifier and 4 stolen speakers.
 
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Neet little circuit, I'm looking for a simular project for my neighbours dog. Could you give a parts descripton on your layout please. Regards Bill from the uk
 
Thank you for you reply, I think you miss understud my Question, I was hoping that you could give me the resistor and capacitor values. If that could be possable i would appriciate it. Regards Bill
 
bill, since this thread is over a year old, I'd suggest you try starting a new one with your question. Feel free to link to this one, but it is better if you start your own, rather than picking up someone else's ;)

Regards,
Der Strom
 
I would like to take the time on a humanitarian note to mention that by increasing the power sufficiently could damage both human (even if you can't hear it) and dog hearing in close proximity? The only way to train an animal is via negative reinforcement, a simple beeper than doesn't hurt can't work, if this works that means it's causing pain which means it's causing hearing damage.

While some people see them as cruel 'bark collars' work quiet effectively, they produce taser like zaps if they vibrate enough from a bark. It's like getting slapped in the face by a feather coated brick =) But it causes no lasting damage. Buy one for the neighboors dog too! =)
 
It's like getting slapped in the face by a feather coated brick =) But it causes no lasting damage.
LOL. Nice analogy, but I think the laws of physics dictate that there would be lasting damage. And I thought you were in humanitarian mode!
 
While some people see them as cruel 'bark collars' work quiet effectively, they produce taser like zaps if they vibrate enough from a bark. It's like getting slapped in the face by a feather coated brick =) But it causes no lasting damage. Buy one for the neighboors dog too! =)

I would like to point out that I did mention in one of my earlier posts that I would never, NEVER, NEVER buy one of those collars again. They are effective. But moreso than the concern of the remote possibility of a little hearing damage over a long period of time -- those collars work by firmly pressing hard electrodes against the neck of the animal. Even taking the collars off routinely, my dog still ended up with a pressure sore on his neck that needed to be debrided. I felt absolutely terrible after that, and started this project.

Also, my dogs stop barking when I bang on the window. It's not because the sound is damaging their hearing. It's just a distraction. The device hardly generates nearly enough db's to be dangerous. I ended up tweaking the design to utilize a random generator so the final sound was more of a warble... so the dogs would never quite get used to it. And it also launches feather coated bricks... ironically enough.
 
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