Seen that with an elevator running. As soon as the elevator moved, wifi & BT died.
The problem was that the elevator was older than wifi and BT, so there was no warranty or something they could just call on. I told them to still get it fixed, as the local equivalent of the FCC is known not be be that nice when something is creating problems on the spectrum.
My neighbor’s poorly shielded microwave would knock out our WiFi. Because microwaves are in the 2.4GHz range, which is also the same range as older WiFi. Except that a microwave operates with several thousand times more power than WiFi, so it essentially acts as a jammer when it’s not shielded well.
Figuring that out took me fucking ages. I eventually heard her microwave beep through the shared wall, right as my WiFi came back online.
Yep, microwaves are nasty in that regard.
Ours did that for WiFi. I knew when my wife was warming something in the Microwave, by her complaints about her streaming video dropping
That used to happen at a friend’s house, the microwave would shut down their WiFi.
It’s truly a challenge when even your elevator is on the spectrum.
recently dealt with an issue at my parents house where whenever they connected the TV to the wifi, half the devices in the house would lose connection. turns out there was an instability in the Comcast router firmware and whenever the TV would connect it would crash everything else on the 2.4ghz frequency.
solution was to replace the router with one they owned instead of whatever crap they were leasing from Comcast.
Had a similar problem with my sister’s computer. Everything connected to the same switch as her computer stopped working after the computer booted. The solution was surprisingly easy, just updating the NIC drivers.
I had an issue like this with a tp-link Wi-Fi adapter in my computer. Never buying from tp-link again
Sounds like a Mouse issue or at worst a refrigerator issue, lesson on getting a good PSU and USP to compensate for others failures.
They weren’t underlining the spelling error?
This reminds me of when I had apprenticeship classes that got interrupted by the covid lockdowns. I was forced to do theory classes online over zoom. Every morning my wifi connection would drop for a few minutes at a time during my classes.
Turns out it was the microwave. Every time someone used the microwave, it would disrupt the wifi/router for the whole house.
Ended up making a sign to let people know I was in class. My classes were only for 8 weeks total. I had about 4 or 5 weeks remaining by the time I figured it out so it wasn’t too long of an inconvenience.
I’ve seen similar. Whole two story office building’s wifi got knocked out by some big ol’ 1960s microwave.
No one could figure out why the wifi kept going down during lunch.
Me trying to find out why I hear static on my ham radio.
This is like the tech equivalent of consulting the village shaman or wisewoman for some serious disease.
Pumps and motors do mess with electronics though.
True, true… The techpriest vibes I’m getting out of this is because it’s a minor to non-existant improvement that might or might not be placebo is achieved by seemingly outlandish cure. As if the angry spirit of the fridge needed appeasing so that it stops haunting your mouse.
especially if the pseudo-solution does work in terms of eliminating the symptom, but the real problem was that something isn’t grounded properly…
The more consumer friendly and complex this stuff gets the further away from the raw metal those the users see as “magicians” are.
It used to be that the “magicians” were the Electronics Geeks (and the OP’s post and most comments here are a basically on “magic” that has to do with Electronics), but nowadays most “magicians” capable of explaining and dealing with the “unexplainable” are Software Techies.
Ive had commercial techs float the idea of wrapping a tv reciever in foil to mitigate signal interference.
The shamans gut feelings are to be listened to.
My right monitor will occasionally turn off when the small refrigerator in the room starts its compressor. The right monitor isn’t on battery powered backup like the left one, in an effort to have a bit more time on battery when power really goes out. Took a while for me to figure out the cause, but if I had to troubleshoot that remotely (I do remote IT support for a living) I’d be so confused.
Reminds me of the story of a company whose internet connection would cut out intermittently and they couldn’t figure out why. Details hazy but the gist is here.
One day they have a tech come in to investigate the problem. He goes downstairs to where the router is, and everything’s fine.
Seemingly the moment he goes to leave, the connection goes off. Panic stations! He goes back to the router and the connection is re-establishing. OK. All tests fine. He goes away again. It goes off again. What. Tech aura is real!
Nope. Turns out that when he went downstairs, he used the stairs. When he was coming back up he was lazy and used the lift.
The lift motor had been causing enough EM noise to knock out the connection whenever it was used.
I’ve also read another of someone with connection issues with their server. Server was unreachable, but every time someone went into the server room to debug the problem everything was working fine. After a while they noticed the switch with all the cables was plugged to the same outlet as the lightbulb, an outlet which was motion activated, so it only worked while someone was in there.
USB-3 over USB-A upstream sockets often put out 2.4GHz noise which will interfere with many wireless dongles, including those commonly used for wireless mice and keyboards. The solution is to get a USB2 extension cable or hub for your dongles.
Intel knew this would be a problem, but ignored it.
In the core2duo era I overclocked a cpu to 2.4GHz, and It killed the wifi in the computer similarly, it took a while to figure out why it was happening, and connect the 2 seemingly unrelated thing.
Microwave ovens also work in the 2.4 GHz range, at one flat my torrents basically stopped when my neighbor used their oven.
I’ve literally seen a heater on a timer cause modem brownouts, ain’t nothing too crazy to happen
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And how did you know that none of your neighbors had smart lights?
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My point is that there clearly could still be smart lights in the vicinity.
I worked for a cable company as the sysadmin. They were having trouble with channels going off randomly but most often in the morning and evening. One day in the middle of the day I’m out there with all hands on deck discussing the problem when one of the employee’s showed up in his older GM truck. Just as he arrived the channels went out and they jumped on the scopes and cable meters to start looking for the problem. He got out it stopped. We all stood around for a few minutes saying it was going to be a long day if we couldn’t figure this out. After a little bit he was instructed to go back to burying drops on his schedule. The second he cranked up the problem started. He drove off and it stopped. Three of us just looked at one another and we called him back. Sure enough as soon as he drove up the problem started. He was given instruction to not drive past the office gate and the problem went away. As to what on that old truck was throwing out all the gigahertz interference we may never know. That truck was gone withing a week.
I can’t say if the frequency is right, but poorly shielded spark plug wires will send all kinds of EM out. You know, the older cars where if you touched one of those wires you’d feel it, or you could see the aura if it was dark jumping around.
