FreeLLMOpen‑source Beep Locator lets phones and laptops triangulate mysterious sounds
A Python‑based web app turns browsers into a microphone array, using acoustic ranging to pinpoint beeps within about 40 cm.
Simon Willison built Beep Locator after a mysterious beep began sounding in his storage room.
Listeners first calibrate by chirping to estimate their relative positions, then a sync chirp aligns recordings when a target beep occurs, allowing time‑difference‑of‑arrival calculations.
The GitHub repository provides a full setup script, including uv and cloudflared for HTTPS, and supports remote code updates to listener pages without page reloads.
In testing, the tool located the source within roughly 40 cm, leading Willison to replace the batteries of an old carbon‑monoxide detector.
What it means for you
Beep Locator shows how AI‑assisted development can produce practical, open‑source hardware tools using only commodity devices.
Sources
- Locating the source of a mysterious beep with Claude, Simon Willison, 9 Nov 2026
- GitHub - simonw/beep-locator: Locate annoying beeps · GitHub, github.com (official), 9 Nov 2026
Written automatically from the sources above, then checked by our code: every number and name must appear in them, and no sentence may copy a source. Spotted a mistake? Report it.
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