Mystery signal vs. Arvada garage door-openers

[rfburns]

Accidental Socket Surge Issue

That is one strange story the way it is written. Torres makes it sound like the Christmas display of lights acted like a large antenna and sucked up all the RF from the remotes. I couldn't stop laughing. Then when you read a bit further you get the idea that the large antenna made signals bounce around the neighborhood. I don't think the story received any technical review. All Torres had to do was walk down the hall and talk with Bill Boyer or one of the other engineers. There are several hams working in Engineering who could have made sense out of it.

Why not just say the Christmas display generated interference which blocked the garage door receivers. "Accidental socket surge issue" don't anyone tell OSHA or EPA, they'll have a regulation against it next year.

9NEWS, you can do better than that.

One of my neighbors must have bought the same Christmas display, probably made in China. My new 315 mHz receiver is still working without any problems BTW.

 

[Halfpint]

This was my next guess...


Christmas display knocked out power to 40 garage doors | 9news.com

ROTFLHMSIP!


Now... I *might* be able to believe that there was *something in that display* that could have produced a `spurious emission' but, even then I would have to ask "Prove it!" first. Frankly the proffered explanation sounds more like the old "baffle them with BS" syndrome that some people or organizations put forth when *they* don't have any clue about themselves but want to just make whatever it is go away. "Socket Surge" my posterior!

I just had a thought as to a question I would have liked to ask the 9News reporter. Were *all* the affected residences *all* on the *same* transformer and was the supposed `offender' *also* on the *same* transformer? (Those of you who have played around with PLC systems like X10 will know where that comes from. [Ah, the `joys', *NOT*, of having a neighbor using the same `housecode' or `housecodes' and is sharing the same `pole pig'/transformer. {GRIMACE!}]) And even then, we are talking about several orders of difference, frequency-wise and power-wise, between the signals used which would mean that the `offender' would have to have been putting out a signal strong enough that *a lot of other people not just garage door opener users* would have been `up in arms about' if the interference came through via the power lines.

Oh, well... Unless this kicks up again, or someone lets slip that there was something `clandestine' going on, I suspect that we will probably not know just what was the culprit. Pity though as a whole bunch of people will end up believing that what the reporter said was what happened and will always be suspicious of huge lighting displays no matter how they are created.

 

[datainmotion]

We are all now dumber for reading that 9News story.