On Mar 10, 5:18�am, wrote:
Hi chaps,

I suspect a neighbour of a friend of mine is using an ultrasonic bird-
scarer to frighten off his pets. The man concerned won´t admit to it,
but there are times when his dog and two cats just seem to get
suddenly very distressed and hypermanic for no apparent reason. I`d
like to at least eliminate this possibility before considering any
others. So the question is, what´s the simplest way to detect
ultrasound? My web research leads me to believe the area of interest
is between 20 and 30khz. Most common bird scarers warble between these
two limits which are of course above the range of human hearing. I´ve
acquired an ultrasonic transducer that transmits on 41khz. If I couple
this up to a wien-bridge oscillator trimmed to the same frequency, I
figure I ought to be able to hear a warble if indeed this guy is using
a birdscarer, because the difference between 41khz and 20khz-30khz
will be audible to me. Is this feasible to "air mix" the two
frequencies in this simple way and hear a result, or is something more
complicated required?
Thanks!

The obvious "detection" would be oscilloscope observation
of the amplified microphone signal. That's been mentioned.

Some commercial ultrasound detectors simply heterodyne
the ultrasonic range down to audible frequencies...good if
your hearing goes on up to the high end of human response.
Expensive as portable devices but easily genned up on the
average home workbench.

There are a couple of claims of outdoor advertising via sound
through using high-power ultrasound generators in pairs, one
modulated in amplitude the other unmodulated. The air acts
as the non-linear "mixer" and the claim is that such beams
of ultrasound can be focussed on particular locations. One
such company is located in San Diego, California, if memory
serves.

73, Len AF6AY