Proton BASIC Community

Ha !!  Just have to brag a bit.  All I have to brag with 
Here is how these things should sound !
Save and rename to .MP4.  Turn the sound up.

The file won't open. I renamed it to Bking.mp4

I worked for me on my MacBook and on Windows 7 using VLC media player.

J

I opened it with vlc player without renaming it and it plays directly.
But then Charlie, some things are not for everyone 

We have weird weather.  Real English weather, cool days, mostly cloudy and we had some frequent rain exceeding 1m already this year. Tomatoes sit at about 150mm and not growing for the 3rd month.  The yardlong beans had two stretch to 500mm but the rest is around 200mm.  Weird. They're not going to make it.

The comfrey grows un-be-lievable.  I chop it up and mix with the chicken feed.  Seems every 3 weeks I have to cut them.  http://coescomfrey.com/comfrey.html  There is some oregano on the left which I also sometimes mix in with the feed.  Said to prevent many chicken ailments.

I also add some ground egg shells from the bakery and some diatomaceous earth.  If the chickens don't lay, I show them a Nando's Chicken Nuggets add.

Comfrey dries out very quickly, in one day in the sun, I dry mine in the sun on a canvas sheet.  If you store it overnight wet it already starts fermenting and if it's raining like recently you have to turn it all the time.

3rd picture is for Les.
I use it for the wife too when she wants something done.

Someone mentioned one one of the groups that he experienced arthritis relief when he had a comfrey leaf underside pricking his skin.  Maybe someone can verify this, I haven't heard any more of this.

https://youtube.com/shorts/a5ely2uzO1c?si=WDflHqGP26BrcJ_a
Greenland Great Place To Live

Quote from: Fanie on Jan 20, 2026, 02:14 PMHere is a nice power supply, cheap, easy to use.

Note the power supply has a fuse, marked JK.  I overloaded one and the fuse needs replacement, not a scarce component it seems either.  Perhaps one can replace with a poly fuse that repairs after cooling down.

It's weekend, again.

QuoteReform UK surges to 34% in new Ipsos poll, overtaking Labour and Conservatives, signalling a major political shift that could make Nigel Farage the next PM.

https://parliamentnews.co.uk/nigel-farage-set-to-win-as-reform-takes-9-point-lead

Only 34% ?  Why are not 99% of English voting for him ?

Quote from: Fanie on Feb 04, 2026, 06:43 PM

QuoteReform UK surges to 34% in new Ipsos poll, overtaking Labour and Conservatives, signalling a major political shift that could make Nigel Farage the next PM.

https://parliamentnews.co.uk/nigel-farage-set-to-win-as-reform-takes-9-point-lead

Only 34% ?  Why are not 99% of English voting for him ?

What does this have to do with PICs?

Same as grandpa's with twins.

Serious topic - Rats   

Sorry some long parts below, I have an interest in detecting their sounds, and perhaps even replicating these sounds, perhaps to draw them to an area.

Quotehttps://www.ratbehavior.org/rathearing.htm
Rats can hear ultrasound: the range of the rat's hearing is around 200 Hz to 80 or 90 kHz (Fay 1988, Kelly and Masterson 1977, Warfield 1973). There is a whole world of high frequency sound out there that rats can hear that we cannot, a perceptual difference that humans tend to forget (Milligan et al. 1993, Sales et al. 1998).

Dogs: up to 40,000 Hz
Cats: 100 to 60,000 Hz
Rats: up to 90,000 Hz
Bats: 1,000 to 100,000 Hz
Dolphins: up to 150,000 Hz

Middle C has a frequency of 263 Hz. The lowest note on a piano is 27 Hz, and the highest note is 4186 Hz. The human voice ranges from about 100 to 1700 Hz

Rats can pinpoint the location of a sound to within about 12 degrees for clicks or 9.7 degrees for a burst of white noise (these are measures of chance level localization thresholds; Heffner and Heffner 1985). Similarly, Kavanagh and Kelly (1986) found a sound localization of 11.1 degrees in rats. Humans, in contrast, have greater sound localization acuity. We can pinpoint sounds in front of us to within 2 to 3.5 degrees (average localization error; Makous and Middlebrooks 1990).

20 kHz range: Rats emit long 20 kHz vocalizations when they are unhappy or stressed. These calls are emitted when an adult or juvenile is defeated socially (Thomas 1983), sees a predator (Blanchard 1991), experiences pain (Cuomo 1988, Tonue 1986) or anticipation of pain (Antoniadis 1999), or when an untame rat is handled (Brudzynski and Ociepa 1992).

30 to 50 kHz range: Infant rats produce very high pitched distress calls. These cries elicit maternal care such as retrieving the infants to the nest (Allin and Banks 1971; Carden and Hofer 1992).

https://www.mcmaster.ca/inabis98/brudzynski/white0360/two.html
When Do the Vocalizations Occur?

During copulation, male and female rats generally approach each other and sniff. The female darts or runs away from the male at least once, with the male training behind. Then the male generally mounts the female from behind; at the same time the female becomes immobile in the "lordosis" posture, which allows the male to intromit. On most mounts, the male intromits for about 1/3 of a second. This sequence of behavior is repeated up to 15 times before the male ejaculates. Rats can copulate through several ejaculatory series, usually requiring fewer intromissions than the first series. After each ejaculation, there is a 5 minute period of quiescence, in which the male is often immobile and unresponsive to approaches by the female.

The male and female both emit 50 kHz vocalizations throughout the ejaculatory series. As the males were about to ejaculate, they emit the lower frequency pre-ejaculatory call (White et al, 1990). During the post ejaculatory quiescent period, male emit the 22 kHz vocalization, usually while lying still (Barfield and Geyer, 1975).

ultrasound is quite weak and attenuates very rapidly with distance from the source (Lawrence and Simmons 1982).
ultrasound is blocked by intervening objects like walls and furniture.

tbc...

Quote from: Fanie on Feb 07, 2026, 08:52 AMSerious topic - Rats   

Sorry some long parts below, I have an interest in detecting their sounds, and perhaps even replicating these sounds, perhaps to draw them to an area.

From a google search.
A heterodyne mixer circuit for hearing bats works by taking the inaudible, high-frequency echolocation clicks (typically 20 kHz – 100+ kHz) and mixing them with a locally generated, tunable ultrasonic frequency. The resulting "difference" frequency falls within the human audible range (20 Hz – 20 kHz), allowing you to hear the bats' clicks as audible ticks, chirps, or pops.

Years ago I made a heterodyne mixer type circuit for listening to ultrasound. It performed quite well all sorts of strange noises issued from the speaker, from memory one could hear frequencies above and below the local oscillator. The bandwidth was limited by the transducer I used as a microphone. This is an interesting project maybe some sort of spectrum analyser could be of use. With regards to a heterodyne device one might find a local oscillator frequency best suited for dirty rats.

What do we have that one can detect these frequencies with ?
And around what is that frequency ? so one knows what type of communication is done ?

Some articles claim rats communicate in higher (ultrasonic) frequencies, hence we are unaware that they are communicating.  I suspect there are validity in this, once during a rat outbreak in one situation the rats did not come out in view as they usually did.  A while later I discovered a rat in a tree to my left which was watching me, and most likely warned the rest of the lurking danger.

What do we have to play these frequencies with ?

Hunters often use electronic devices to replicate a prey in distress to lure a potential predator into a certain area.

We have tree rats here.  They breed in/under everyone's wendyhouses  (small wooden huts people put up in their yards to store usually garden tools and other things in), and not in my chicken coop.
I dare not tell the neighbors there are rats, because these idiots buy rat poison and poison everything around, including my chickens.
There is only one solution for eliminating rats, and that is lead poisoning (with an airgun).
(Fanie et al. 2020)

There is something else I observed besides sounds rats make not mentioned in studies -
The one is one can hear their screeching sounds when they fight, usually when an alfa male has been eliminated, and the new alfa rat wants to establish his dominance.
Secondly while they climb in the trees, they drop things and make other noises.  Perhaps this is to announce a dominant one is around, and this is usually how I know when there is a rat operating nearby.  One such favorite activity is to climb in the palm trees and drop the seeds.  I have shot as many rats there as I have on the ground.

For interest sake some other observations.
Rats have extreme reflexes.  My pellets travel at around 960fps (measured), and with many shots you can see the rat, in the dark, just too late of course, already moving, trying to evade the incoming projectile.  960fps is just below the speed of sound, so they cannot hear the sound before it hits them.  (Sound speed ~1,126 feet per second (fps) or 344 m/s).

Domesticated cats are useless around rats.  This fat lazy bugger of ours (and our previous cats) will look at the rats I shot, but have no interest in catching them.  He will catch birds, and of course fight with other cats.
The wife tried to save a small bird he caught, it was still screaming.  When she approached him he gave the poor bird one final bite and took off with it.

The cats in the area do catch mice (plural mouses or, mouse, mice, meece ?)  We have a small type of mouse in the area around 20mm which is minute.  I don't shoot them, from previous observations they don't come near the chickens, but the neighboring cats do catch them.  The only time I see a cat in the chicken coop.

Rats catch and eat mice.

These tree rats climb into the trees, find a bird (usually doves), give it one head bite to kill it and collect it on the ground.  I have found up to three dead doves at one time.  The rats pic them clean in a day or two, only feathers and parts of the skeleton remaining.

The internet claims microphones can "hear" 20Hz to 45kHz... but all the commercial components data sheets shows only to 15kHz.
One will probably have to test each to determine the actual range.
And what to use as a frequency transmitter...

Another option is piezo wafers, but I suspect they will be inefficient except at their resonant frequency.

One will have to use a dish to receive frequencies only from a direction instead of from everywhere.  Advantage is concentration and hence better reception.

A few years ago I built a 'bat detector' using a PIC and op-amps.  It was to test an underwater sonar device made by Kongsberg.  If I remember rightly the operating frequencies were around 32KHz.  The PIC pinged the responder on the frequency set to match the responder and detected the return on a different frequency.

https://www.grasacoustics.com/microphone-guide/frequency-range

QuoteThe frequency range of a microphone is defined as the interval between its upper limiting frequency and its lower limiting frequency. With today's microphones you can cover a frequency range starting from around 1Hz and reaching up to 140 kHz.

Likely, because the receptor is small to hear the higher frequencies, unless a cap is in it to filter.  If this is possible then you just have to use an amplifier with suitable power band, and then measure the frequency and display that value, and a dish concentrator of course.
One other problem is the short duration the rats make the sounds, will have to use a very awake pic.

I made a dish before and the things you can hear is amazing.  You can hear insects crawling and the bird you hear is a few hundred meters away.