A man who had grown tired of his neighbor’s loud reggaeton music devised a solution to have the tranquility he desired. Maker and developer Roni Bandini decided to act on the matter by programming a Raspberry Pi-powered response.
Roni programmed his Raspberry Pi device to detect when reggaeton music was playing and interfere with nearby Bluetooth speakers, making the sound distorted.
The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer, or SBC, built onto one circuit board. All the components needed for a fully functional computer, including the processor, memory, video chipset, and storage, are built onto the SBC. This allows it to be much more compact and inexpensive compared to regular computers.
Sick of his neighbor’s loud reggaeton music, a man created an AI-powered device that can identify the music genre and alter the sound quality of nearby speakers
Image credits: Roni Bandini
These microcomputers are designed to run any ARM-based Linux distribution for an operating system and can be used for different purposes, from learning programming to serving as a fully-fledged PC and, now, taking matters into your own hands whenever you hear annoying music.
Roni downloaded several reggaeton songs and fed them to an AI model on his Raspberry Pi. Once the algorithm was trained, it was able to detect patterns that eventually identified whether the song playing was reggaeton or not.
To listen out for the loud music, he used a microphone that plugs into a USB port on the Raspberry Pi.
To listen out for the loud music, he used a microphone that plugs into a USB port on his Raspberry Pi
The maker and developer used two special software programs: Raspberry Pi OS, which is like the brain of the Raspberry Pi, and Edge Impulse, which helps the Raspberry Pi identify patterns.
“Once it detects it, it begins jamming the Bluetooth speaker playing the music, making the song sound like a malfunctioning radio,” the tech entrepreneur explained during an interview with the Argentine radio show El Obervador.
He also mentioned that his ultimate goal was for his device to disconnect the speaker from its host. For the moment, though, he’s more than pleased with making the popular Latin rhythm sound so bad that his neighbor wants to turn it off.
Once it detects that a reggaeton song is being played, the device distorts the sound of the speaker, making it similar to a malfunctioning radio
It’s worth noting that Roni’s project, titled Reggaeton Be Gone, was made as an experiment and may not be safe to recreate, as it can be considered hacking in many parts of the globe.
People’s opinions were divided about Roni’s anti-reggaeton project.
“Fighting antisocial behavior with more antisocial behavior… Certainly a lot [of] people thinking that’s perfectly okay these days. What could go wrong?” one person wrote.
Another said: “Because authorities are inherently inefficient on this topics, ones doesn’t have other way but self defense against those people.”
“Finally I’m heard and seen!!! This is effing hilarious!” a third person commented.
Meanwhile, others expressed their wish for someone to develop a similar device capable of identifying alternative music genres.
“I’m waiting on the HipHopBeStop. It’s an annoyance on the highway (especially at 4am),” someone said, while another added, “Do a country-music-begone and take my money.”
Then, some feared the project may be the predecessor of more threatening devices: “Give it time… somebody will eventually make an AI-controlled robot programmed to key their neighbor’s car,” a social media user wrote.
Many people were not convinced by the invention
