{
  "id": 19248483,
  "title": "Locating the source of a mysterious beep with Claude",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/09/locating-the-source-of-a-mysterious-beep-with-claude",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-09T23:57:21.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Simon Willison",
    "slug": "simon-willison",
    "url": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/9/mysterious-beeps/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Claude Code developed a software system named Beep Locator to determine the origin of a mysterious intermittent beep emanating from a storage room filled with unsorted boxes. The developer, using multiple devices such as iPads, phones, MacBook Pro, and Surface Ultra, connected them to a Python web server to visualize the primary user interface. These devices acted as listeners, playing sounds that aided in estimating their positions. In case of inaccuracies, a \"Rough mode\" was introduced, allowing users to manually adjust the estimated positions of the devices. Once the setup was complete, the devices listened for the beep and recorded it. The beep appeared on the map as an X, accompanied by a line in the \"Sounds located\" log. Users could replay these sounds to confirm their identification and mark them as the mystery beep. After confirming the beep frequency, the system would listen for it, measure the interval between beeps, and pinpoint its likely location using the triangulated locations. The Beep Locator system was successful in locating the source of the beep within approximately 40cm, leading the developer to discover an outdated carbon monoxide detector. The idea for this project originated from a 2007 paper, BeepBeep: A High-Accuracy Acoustic-Based System for Ranging and Localization Using COTS Devices, which proposed a software-based solution using basic commodity hardware like speakers, microphones, and device-to-device communication. Claude Code was instrumental in this endeavor, helping to design, implement, and evaluate the Beep Locator system and enabling the hot-swap functionality to make live changes to the software while it was running.",
  "summary": "Our house has a box room, full of boxes that we still haven't unpacked from our last move. A couple of weeks ago something in that room started intermittently beeping . The beeps were far enough apart that standing in the room and trying to determine the source of the noise was frustrating, and I really didn't want to dig through every one of those boxes. So I had Claude Code build Beep Locator ,…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}