UselessFinds
The Cricket That Chirps On Its Own Schedule

the timer is the cruelty

Prank Gear

The Cricket That Chirps On Its Own Schedule

A matchbox-sized chirping device with a remote and a timer. Hide it and walk away — it keeps going without you.

Buy this nonsense$31.48(sponsored link, opens in a new tab)
  • cricket noise maker
  • prank device
  • hidden timer
  • office prank
  • remote control
  • annoying

What Is This Thing?

A black plastic module roughly the size of a matchbox — the listing photos put it at about 4.8cm across, small enough to vanish in a closed hand — with a speaker grille on one face and a small circuit board on the other. It ships with a keyfob remote carrying three buttons.

It chirps. That is the function. What separates it from every other hidden buzzer is the third button: a timer. Set it, hide the device, and it will chirp on its own at intervals long after you have left the building.

We already sell a bare circuit board that does something similar for a fifth of the price. That one needs you in the room with a remote. This one does not need you at all.

Why You Don't Need It

You are buying a device whose only output is a sound that makes people search their own home. It has no off-switch anyone but you can find, because the entire design premise is that nobody can find it.

At thirty-one dollars it costs roughly what a decent pair of headphones costs on the same site. Those headphones produce sound you asked for.

Why You'll Buy It Anyway

The remote-control version has a ceiling: the moment you are seen holding a keyfob, the joke is over and the search ends. The timer removes you from the scene entirely. The chirping continues while you are at lunch, while you are at home, while your colleague is explaining to a third person that there is definitely a cricket somewhere behind the filing cabinet.

A prank you have to stand next to is a performance. A prank that runs on a schedule is an infestation, and an infestation is much funnier because there is no one to blame.

The Cricket That Chirps On Its Own Schedule — photograph 2
The Cricket That Chirps On Its Own Schedule — photograph 3

Who It's Actually For

The person planning something longer than an afternoon. It suits an office with a suspended ceiling, a shared flat with a colleague who claims nothing bothers them, or a sibling whose room you will not be in when it goes off.

It is also, genuinely, the wrong gift for anyone who lives alone and sleeps badly. Some pranks have a floor and this one is below it.

before you click buy

Check the battery situation before ordering — small devices like this usually take a coin cell or a pair of AAAs, and the listing photos show a compartment rather than a sealed unit, which is good news for a device you intend to leave running.

Hide it somewhere you can reach again. The failure mode of this product is not that it stops working. It is that it does not, and you have forgotten which ceiling tile it is above.

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