I use a Dowco cover on my treasured bike. I decided to try their easy to integrate motorcycle cover alarm.

The Dowco Weatherall guardian cover survives in marine environments. I live in a densely populated beach community wherein an alarm is probably not a bad idea. This one is simple, loud and will probably surprise the shit out of anyone who decides to move my cover around.

A simple pin plugged into the top of the alarm completes a circuit. The pin is connected to a swivel clip that you attach to your bike. The alarm fits in a Dowco integrated pocket, or simply clips to your cover. The lanyard between the two is fairly short and when the pin pops a lot of noise happens.

A calm and controlled robber will smash the alarm fairly quickly. The wind may blow a loose cover enough to set the alarm off. Under normal circumstances, however, I think adding this alarm to my cover is better than not having it there.

I can not wait until I have forgotten it is there and set off the alarm in my face.

Dowco Guardian 26038-00 Integrated Motorcycle Cover Security Alarm System/Theft Deterrent via Amazon Read the rest

Carryl Baldwin, a professor of cognition and applied auditory research, designs and tests sounds for "use as alarms in household, aviation, medical, and automotive settings." Atlas Obscura explores the art and science of making sounds that convey a spectrum of urgency:

One of the main considerations is the annoyance factor. To test for annoyance in the lab, says Baldwin, “we’ll construct sounds and we’ll look at all of the different acoustic parameters, so we might vary, for instance, intensity, frequency, the number of harmonics, how fast it ramps up and down, the temporal characteristics—like whether it’s going d-d-d-d-d-duh rapidly or duhhhh-duhhhhh-duhhhh.”

The faster an alarm goes, the more urgent it tends to sound. And in terms of pitch, alarms start high. Most adults can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz—Baldwin uses 1,000 Hz as a base frequency, which is at the bottom of the range of human speech. Above 20,000 Hz, she says, an alarm ”starts sounding not really urgent, but like a squeak.”

Harmonics are also important. To be perceived as urgent, an alarm needs to have two or more notes rather than being a pure tone, “otherwise it can sound almost angelic and soothing,” says Baldwin. “It needs to be more complex and kind of harsh.” An example of this harshness is the alarm sound that plays on TVs across the U.S. as part of the Emergency Alert System. The discordant noise is synonymous with impending doom.

"An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways" (Atlas Obscura) Read the rest