Most likely totally unrelated to electricity
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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Looks very similar to this voice recorder.
Thats so wierd. Thats not ours lol.
But it was your electrical box? Was the device turned on? Definitely a bit concerning TBH. Someone who had access to the box put it there to listen. That person would also have to access the box again later on to retrieve the device and get the audio files. The article claims a 24 hour battery life, so if it was turned on, it was put there very recently.
The house is being rented, so maybe one of the tenants put it there. Yes, it was recording when found
Maybe check with the tenants and if it's not theirs, look and see what's on it.
I can imagine two scenarios:
Whoever put it there was hoping to record someone else. I think that @PonyOfWar@pawb.social brings up a good point that if the battery life is as limited as Pony believes it to be, that seems like it'd seriously limit what one could hope to get. If someone did want more recording time, it'd be really easy to hook that up to a USB powerbank and let it run for far longer and I assume hide it better, which seems like it'd kinda argue against that. If OP is the landlord, maybe they were curious as to what he'd say when he was near the box if they knew that he was going to be in the house. Or maybe it was someone else who wanted to record the tenants, especially if the box is in a living area.
Whoever put it there was using it in the way one traditionally uses a voice recorder, to take notes hands-free. If that's the case, I imagine that it may start with snippets from whoever put it there and forgot it. Like, say that you're trying to figure out what the switches in the breaker box are linked to. I will admit that it seems odd that, if the battery life is so short, that someone would have left it and OP happened to find it before the battery ran out. But I don't know why OP was looking at the box in the first place. If it was because there was some electrical problem and OP was coming out to look at it, could be a tenant trying to look into the situation themselves.
I'd note down something like that in text, but there are people who prefer to use devices like that or voice recorder apps on phones, and if it's voice-activated, it's hands-free, unlike jotting down text.
24 total battery time with voice activation means it can go a lot longer.
Could be, though the spec sheet is not clear what mode the 24 hours refer to. Found this blog which claims around 30 hours in voice activated mode.
Well now you can download the files and see what it captured
But probably best to do it in a sandboxed environment that isn't connected to the internet, just to be safe.
Yeah. I have random old laptops with fresh Linux on them for no reason. Good to have out to a friend/family or use as a air-gapped sandbox.
Just be careful plugging in unknown devices.
I could see a use case for this...
You work in a office and keep this in your shirt pocket set to voice activation.
Good to capture any conversations to CYA in funky situations. Basically wearing a wire.
This is illegal in many states, and even where it is legal, could get you fired from many jobs
The fact that you found this is wild