Help me find my lost mobile phone

[Ancalimon]

I lost my Phone in my home there are four stairs. I can't find it since yesterday. It is definitely in the house. Any idea about how to find a turned off mobile phone? Any homemade mobile detectors?

[motorollin]

If it's turned off then all of the transceivers are powered off. The only detector which will work is your eyes :-)

--
moto

[bloodline]

I wonder if the tiny current leakage from the battery into the Phone electronics (or even the supply to the standby circuits) would be generating a tiny EM field? if you could eliminate all other sources of EM... you could detect it... theoretically...

[Ancalimon]

Ok! We are getting somewhere. How do I build some kind of EM Field Detector? They used those in Stargate SG1

[bloodline]

Totally theoritcal... the world we live in is bathed in far to much EM noise.

But if you do lay your hands on a "Hall Probe", you might be able to have some fun with EM feilds :-)

[Andeda]

FaLLeNOnE wrote:
I lost my Phone in my home there are four stairs. I can't find it since yesterday. It is definitely in the house. Any idea about how to find a turned off mobile phone? Any homemade mobile detectors?

The best way to find something is to stop searching for it,
it usually works fine for me :-D

[A4000_Mad]

Andeda wrote:

The best way to find something is to stop searching for it,
it usually works fine for me :-D

I'd have to agree with that. Also try looking for something completely different that you've lost :-D

I've also had a lot of success with finding things lately by just sitting and thinking hard about where I might have used them last, and places where they could possibly be. I realised that there was no point repeatedly wandering around the house looking in places like the fridge and the washing machine :lol:

[Andeda]

A4000_Mad wrote:

Andeda wrote:

The best way to find something is to stop searching for it,
it usually works fine for me :-D

I'd have to agree with that. Also try looking for something completely different that you've lost :-D

I've also had a lot of success with finding things lately by just sitting and thinking hard about where I might have used them last, and places where they could possibly be. I realised that there was no point repeatedly wandering around the house looking in places like the fridge and the washing machine :lol:

Not that long time ago i did pour myself a cup of coffee, then my telefon ringed, it was a friend of mine who called and we talked for maybe 15 minutes, then i was wondering where my coffee was, i couldn't find it anywhere.
Later that day my fiancee was wondering why there is a cup of coffee in the fridge..   :-D

[A4000_Mad]

Andeda wrote:

A4000_Mad wrote:

Andeda wrote:

The best way to find something is to stop searching for it,
it usually works fine for me :-D

I'd have to agree with that. Also try looking for something completely different that you've lost :-D

I've also had a lot of success with finding things lately by just sitting and thinking hard about where I might have used them last, and places where they could possibly be. I realised that there was no point repeatedly wandering around the house looking in places like the fridge and the washing machine :lol:

Not that long time ago i did pour myself a cup of coffee, then my telefon ringed, it was a friend of mine who called and we talked for maybe 15 minutes, then i was wondering where my coffee was, i couldn't find it anywhere.
Later that day my fiancee was wondering why there is a cup of coffee in the fridge..   :-D

:lol:

@ FaLLeNOnE

Check the fridge, freezer and oven :-D

And seriously check that it isn't in the pocket of a pair of trousers heading for the washing machine. I once lost £300 and my driving licence that way. Doh!

[stevebaz]

Use a metal detecter

[Ancalimon]

Thanks everyone I found the phone days after I lost it Actually my sister said she'll find it in ten minutes. And she did. It turns out it dropped to ground and hid itself behind the trashcan in the bathroom. I cleaned it and its working all right

[Andeda]

Dammit, i was so sure it was in the fridge  :-D

[da9000]

I know FallenOne (is that you in the photo?) has found his phone by now... :-D but since BloodLine always has his foot on the ground, I might as well continue with his line of thought:

I recommend getting in touch with these guys in case you're searching for weak EM fields:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST

I know a couple of people who were somewhat involved with the project. Yes, their stories are SCARY.


As for Andeda's comment:
I totally agree. Let your background brain tasks figure out the solution. Whenever I have a snag in programming or some other involved task, I sleep it off or go do something completely unrelated. When I come back to the problem it takes only minutes if not seconds to find the solution.

Case and point: the other day I bought a mixer for someone which was supposed to be semifunctional, and since I can fix just about anything (my precious Amigas!), I figured I could easily tackle this little motorized daemon. Opened'er up and spent about 20 minutes trying to find out why the multi-speed switch didn't work in all states. No go. I pressed, pushed, soldered, cleaned, wiped, prayed. Nothing.

Left it for another day. A few days later I came back to it and it literally took me 3-4 minutes before noticing that a transistor had one of its legs broken (due to it being easily moved back and forth when opening the damn thing). Soldered it and voila! It worked right away!


And now to A4000_Mad's hillarious comments:

That (looking inside the fridge, etc) is when you know a programmer has one NASTY bug (that, or he's completely incompetent!). I've finally realized that I'm doing this when I unconsciouly start changing the formatting of my code while trying to find a bug. That's when I, nowadays, take the above-mentioned break! :-)


BTW, there's one more method for finding things that really works, but I can't reveal that. (and no, I'm not talking about ESP)


Oh, and one last lesson I've learned when it comes to patterns in finding things: when something is falling or has fallen and it bounced and I caught a glimpse of the whole thing, it's *NEVER* where I initially thing it might be. NEVER. NEVER. Always somewhere else. Damn it! :-D

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Have you already let someone else search for it?

[da9000]

Yeah, that's a good strategy too, Speelgoedmannetje.

I believe the original poster did with his sister and she found it right away!