High-Tech Window Cling is Like a Volume Knob for Real Life

Created by an industrial designer, not an engineer. From the designer&#x27;s website [0]:<p>&gt; With its concentric broadband antenna rings, it harvests the energy of electromagnetic noise from Wi-Fi, and similar signals and this way also reduces the level of e-smog pollution in your environment.<p><i>facepalm</i>. This is nonsense.<p>[0] <a href="http://id2studio.at/content/noise/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;id2studio.at&#x2F;content&#x2F;noise&#x2F;</a>

I think more likely this was made by some film students for a school project or something then by physicists with a working prototype.<p>I always thought the only way of doing this would be to have detached microphones positioned between the speaker and the target noise so the system has enough time to compute the inverse of the incoming waves and send them out with enough space to cancel in the correct phase.

Does anyone know where to follow this project, or perhaps if there&#x27;s a Kickstarter or something? I can&#x27;t seem to find anything outside of this one article. I would pay very good money for something like this. Ground floor apartments on major streets are awful. :-(

This is an obnoxious designer BS, this is just not doable for a host of reasons - from basic physics to unavailabilty of algorithms required to the lack of physical components liberally massaged into the rendering - so it&#x27;s even more fascinating to see the HN thread filled with &quot;take my money&quot; and &quot;awesome&quot; comments.<p>Really, fellas? I don&#x27;t mind a discussion on how it could possibly be done, but where&#x27;s your rudimental critical thinking? Even reddit had a better discussion [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/1pdfb0/volume_knob_for_your_window_sticks_to_glass/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1pdfb0&#x2F;volume_knob_...</a>

I&#x27;m not convinced about the ability to block out certain <i>types</i> of sounds (e.g. birds vs traffic), but blocking out certain frequencies should be quite possible.<p>Of course, there&#x27;s one question the article didn&#x27;t address: what proportion of sound is actually transmitted through window panes? One would expect that a whole lot of low-frequency sounds (traffic) would come through the walls too.

This is complete and utter fiction.

Selective noise cancellation could be possible using a Fourier transform. Zero out the coefficients that you still want to hear and then perform an inverse transform, then a time-domain inversion, and finally apply the appropriate amount of delay to the signal.

Does anyone remember those suction cup speakers that attached to windows and turned them into speakers?<p>Years ago I wanted to splice a noise canceling headphone into one of these devices and make the windows noise canceling. Would that even be feasible?

I totally hate active noise cancelation... I don&#x27;t know whether it only gets out like 99% of the noise while leaving like... the outlines of a clipped out picture on photoshop or what, but it&#x27;s hell on my ears. It just causes pain without any indication of whats causing it and that&#x27;s incredibly unnerving.

I looked into noise cancellation technology a while ago, because I have a hobby woodshop, and I want to be able to use my tools past 10 pm.<p>I just don&#x27;t believe this concept could work the way the video demonstrates it. Nice interface though... but that&#x27;s kind of the easy part.

I&#x27;ll believe it when I see it...

That was a fantastic video.