The system when installed continually logs the prevailing noise levels and the complainant activates a sound recording using the hand switch when disturbed by a noise event. This ensures that the complainant is in full control of when sound recordings are made.

The hand switch can be used to trigger audio recordings of 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes or 5 minutes duration with a pre-trigger facility of between 5 seconds and 30 seconds which records sound up to 30 seconds before the button was pressed. The pre-trigger facility is important in recording door slams, shouting, cars revving and other short duration high level events.
The hand switch has four buttons which can be used to record different noise sources or to rank noise events in order of the degree of annoyance. Also, for simplicity of operation the hand switch can be configured to start and stop a recording without distinguishing which button was used.