Transmitting UHF turns on outdoor motion detection lights

[BonziBuddy]

Whenever I transmit on UHF... 2 of my neighbors house's outdoor driveway lights turn on. I have been able to reproduce this with my truck on random streets all over town.

Anybody elese ever notice this?

Try it for yourself.

 

[KJ4ZZP]

Never noticed but thats kind of funny,lol

 

[Cyberider]

Mine turn on when I transmit on HF.

 

[reedeb]

When ever I key up on 2 mtr my touchlamp turns on and off. I had a guy in Southern Maine years ago when ever he keyed up his CB [with a linear] his garage door would open and close

 

[vinzep491]

Why does this happen? Is it a frequency interference issue or something else?

 

[GrumpyGuard]

If I key up my 2meter ht in the garage the light on the opener turns on.

 

[BonziBuddy]

If I key up my 2meter ht in the garage the light on the opener turns on.

Wow same here. 2 meters also turns on my inside garage lights, yet 40 meters turns on my neighbors outside lights.

 

[K9WG]

Why does this happen? Is it a frequency interference issue or something else?

Because the designer/manufacturer made a crappy device that is intolerant to the presence of RF (no filtering). Probably detecting the RF, rectifying it, and interpreting it as a valid condition to turn on the lights. I noticed my PC speakers make noise every time I key up my hand held in the room (VHF and UHF).

 

[davidgcet]

the old drug task force here found out if you key a low band on 42.02 in a '96 Dodge Ram 1500 and the windshield wipers will turn on. only way to turn them off is disconnect the battery, turning the wiper switch on/off has no affect on them.

i had an APC SmartUPS at a tower site that hated the AM station a couple hundred yards away. funny thing was it would run fine all day when they were in high power mode, but soon as they switched to low power for the night, the UPS thought commercial power had dropped and ran on battery until it died 5 hours later. the only way to get it back to normal was wait for the AM station to turn power back up and it would reset itself. i sat at the tower all night one night just to see what was causing it. even if i manually reset it, as long as the AM station was in low power mode it would trip out.

 

[K9WG]

Poorly designed electronics have been the bane of Ham Operators ever since Marconi was alive.

 

[redshift]

i had an APC SmartUPS at a tower site that hated the AM station a couple hundred yards away. funny thing was it would run fine all day when they were in high power mode, but soon as they switched to low power for the night, the UPS thought commercial power had dropped and ran on battery until it died 5 hours later. the only way to get it back to normal was wait for the AM station to turn power back up and it would reset itself. i sat at the tower all night one night just to see what was causing it. even if i manually reset it, as long as the AM station was in low power mode it would trip out.

That's pretty neat. Did you ever switch out the UPS and if so did it solve the problem? I'd wager it was probably the utility supply wiring picking up the AM tower's emissions and sending the UPS a complex garbled-up mashup of the 60 Hz AC waveform and that AM station's emission, causing the UPS to fail to battery. The sensing circuits on those things aren't the best, although the more expensive ones have better sensitivity control.

I have a UPS in my house that used to fail to battery every time I turned on my porch lights. I eventually figured out that the CFLs coupled with the electronic timer switch I had installed were distorting the AC waveform so far out of whack that the UPS thought the supply voltage was too high and dropped out. When I replaced the timer switch, that stopped happening. I don't know if the new switch attenuates some of the noise that the CFLs introduce onto the line, or if the old one was the source of the noise, but there was definitely a lot of interference on that line. I'd have loved to be able to throw an oscilloscope on there and see what it looked like -- probably would have been interesting.

 

[davidgcet]

yeah put a plain jane old dumb UPS in and it never gave another issue. the bad thing was it was in Tuscaloosa AL, so i had a 5 hour drive each way just to sit there and wait for the durn thing to act up!

 

[twjr80]

Never had any issues like earlier stated. I do, however, have one small issue when i key up my HF radio. My USB mouse stops working and I have to unplug/replug it in.

 

[K9WG]

Never had any issues like earlier stated. I do, however, have one small issue when i key up my HF radio. My USB mouse stops working and I have to unplug/replug it in.

I was getting interference on 10-meters from my wireless USB mouse then I figured out it was running on 27Mhz. I could tune down there and listen to all the data it was transmitting....

 

[CalebATC]

Because the designer/manufacturer made a crappy device that is intolerant to the presence of RF (no filtering). Probably detecting the RF, rectifying it, and interpreting it as a valid condition to turn on the lights. I noticed my PC speakers make noise every time I key up my hand held in the room (VHF and UHF).

Every radio of mine does that! Even on HF. Speakers hum and if you listen close, you can hear some noise.

 

[Thayne]

I was able to set off a lot of car alarms by driving thru parking lots in a van while keyed up on UHF (452.xxx) with a kenwood 25 Watt mobile; about 15 feet away going about 10 MPH. Best time to do it was when there was a lot of people going in and out--I would just act as innocent and surprised as possible.
It all ended when my partner's loose lips ratted me out.

 

[MPFD535]

I worked at a firehouse on a truck and anytime I did a radio check on there UHF radio to test it there tv in the bay would turn on, and if you keyed up again it would go off.

 

[bosco836]

I notice that our motion-sensor lights turn on as well when I key up on our VHF portables...particularly in the 150-160 range.

 

[Thayne]

2 other things I just remembered; a GFI receptacle in the garage will trip just from keying up on a 4w handheld within a foot of the GFI and also the nutone electronic doorbell would start making noise when my old nextel IDEN phone was within 5 feet and was either making or receiving a call.

 

[gcgrotz]

I was getting interference on 10-meters from my wireless USB mouse then I figured out it was running on 27Mhz. I could tune down there and listen to all the data it was transmitting....

Nice engineering job there! Making a wireless device that operates in the CB band. Smart!