Python library for playing fixed-frequency sound

Question

I have a mosquito problem in my house. This wouldn't usually concern a programmers' community; However, I've seen some devices that claim to deter these nasty creatures by playing a 17Khz tone. I would like to do this using my laptop.

One method would be creating an MP3 with a a single, fixed-frequency tone (This can easily done by audacity), opening it with a python library and playing it repeatedly.

The second would be playing a sound using the computer built-in speaker. I'm looking for something similar to QBasic Sound:

SOUND 17000, 100 

Is there a python library for that?

Answer 1

PyAudiere is a simple cross-platform solution for the problem:

>>> import audiere >>> d = audiere.open_device() >>> t = d.create_tone(17000) # 17 KHz >>> t.play() # non-blocking call >>> import time >>> time.sleep(5) >>> t.stop() 

pyaudiere.org is gone. The site and binary installers for Python 2 (debian, windows) are available via the wayback machine e.g., here's source code pyaudiere-0.2.tar.gz.

To support both Python 2 and 3 on Linux, Windows, OSX, pyaudio module could be used instead:

#!/usr/bin/env python """Play a fixed frequency sound.""" from __future__ import division import math  from pyaudio import PyAudio # sudo apt-get install python{,3}-pyaudio  try:     from itertools import izip except ImportError: # Python 3     izip = zip     xrange = range  def sine_tone(frequency, duration, volume=1, sample_rate=22050):     n_samples = int(sample_rate * duration)     restframes = n_samples % sample_rate      p = PyAudio()     stream = p.open(format=p.get_format_from_width(1), # 8bit                     channels=1, # mono                     rate=sample_rate,                     output=True)     s = lambda t: volume * math.sin(2 * math.pi * frequency * t / sample_rate)     samples = (int(s(t) * 0x7f + 0x80) for t in xrange(n_samples))     for buf in izip(*[samples]*sample_rate): # write several samples at a time         stream.write(bytes(bytearray(buf)))      # fill remainder of frameset with silence     stream.write(b'\x80' * restframes)      stream.stop_stream()     stream.close()     p.terminate() 

Example:

sine_tone(     # see http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html     frequency=440.00, # Hz, waves per second A4     duration=3.21, # seconds to play sound     volume=.01, # 0..1 how loud it is     # see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate#Audio     sample_rate=22050 # number of samples per second ) 

It is a modified (to support Python 3) version of this AskUbuntu answer.

Answer 2

The module winsound is included with Python, so there are no external libraries to install, and it should do what you want (and not much else).

 import winsound  winsound.Beep(17000, 100) 

It's very simple and easy, though is only available for Windows.

But:
A complete answer to this question should note that although this method will produce a sound, it will not deter mosquitoes. It's already been tested: see here and here