The following is more a vent than anything really constructive, but...
So for the last four days (yes, I got called in New Years day afternoon), something has been beeping in the computer room.
Let me rephrase that. A proper beep would have likely been little more than an annoyance. No, this was a single, fraction of a second, fairly high frequency, not very loud, chirp, repeated at odd intervals, typically in the 5-20 minute range, although with excursions to the 30s and 2-hour-plus ranges. And did I mention, the volume was not particularly consistent? And it was high enough pitched that half the people trying to help couldn't hear it at all.
IOW, a signal with very poor directionality, in a room with a couple of dozen computers, other electronics, A/C, and whatnot contributing tons of background noise.
I have rarely in my life been so frustrated, as I have been trying to locate that dang* chirp.
As it turns out, there was a device that had an embedded fan (1.5 inch muffin), and a temperature sensor. The fan bearing was going bad (in a quiet area, removed from the outer enclosure, the bad bearing was audible, but not at all in the computer room) and cooling was impacted. The only sign of the overheat was that dang chirp from a little magnetic buzzer (an AX-1212-LF, if anyone cares). Somewhat amusingly, this is a device rated for 8-12V, and there's nothing more than 5V headed into the portion of the device where the buzzer was (and there are mechanically identical 5V and 3V devices in the product line - AX-1205, AX-1203, for example). That probably explains part of both the volume and frequency (the device is supposed to be producing ~2300Hz, but it was at least in the 5kHz range) issues. The apparently minimal length of pulse used to trigger it likely explains the rest. And did I mention that this buzzer is inside a mostly enclosed component inside the case of the device?
And no, the overheat does not appear to be reported anywhere (despite considerable chat between the device and the host system).
I understand the need to not make alarms excessively obnoxious (and there is a handy little "BUZZER DISABLE" jumper next to the buzzer), but making them so hard to hear is just absurd. Clearly no one ever tried listening to this in any real environment. There are so many ways this could have been better. A simple series of chirps at each alarm would have made this infinitely easier to trace. Perhaps having it repeat at a reasonable interval. Or a reasonable frequency and duration. They went to all this trouble to monitor temperatures, and then have an alarm, and then made it almost unusable.
Took about 15 minutes to swap in a spare (less than half of which was screwdriver time). Now to find a replacement fan to refurb the old unit.
Ah well. My apologies for the rant. Back to the regularly scheduled program...
*much stronger word removed