Garage Door Openers Stop Working On Entire Missouri Block

[MotionMan]

Garage doors use 300-400MHz RF, which is pretty common among RF devices (remote controls, RF keyboards, etc). I'm guessing that somebody in the area bought an RF device that is putting out way too much power, either due to poor design or a faulty component.

Probably got one for christmas i think

Um, yeah. This mystery was not that hard to solve. With only five homes, it should have been pretty easy to figure out by New Years.

MotionMan

 

[mrblotto]

Should be easy to sniff out the offending transmitter.

What sort of gadget would be required for this?

Unless you're talking about going into each house to have a look-see.........

 

[allenk09]

What sort of gadget would be required for this?

Unless you're talking about going into each house to have a look-see.........

RDF. A yagi antenna for the frequency the jammer is being used on. Can do it without a yagi though.

 

[edro]

I doubt a fighter jet radar jammer could "fry" garage door openers and not anything else.
More like jam them while it is activated.

 

[IronWing]

Damn electric shavers

 

[Jeff7]

Pete&Pete's mom moved into the neighborhood.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Aren't the F117s based in Missouri? Not sure how close to these homes. If it was an EM jammer of some sort, wouldn't other things be effected too?

117s were phased out a long time ago.

There is Whiteman AFB in Mo, but they support the B2. 200 miles away
Boeing has the F15 plant in St Louis 30 miles away

 

[midnight growler]

The problem has been SOLVED!

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_199e0a06-51d6-11e1-9c50-001a4bcf6878.html

Turns out it was caused by a transformer...





... just not a Michael Bay transformer...





...landscape lighting transformer, go figure.

 

[DrPizza]

Reminds me of the time I was bored in a computer lab & started playing with an astronomy simulation that was "password protected" but that protection mechanism pretty much failed. I did some cool simulations with the moon. Then, I thought, "hey, Venus, cool. Let's see what this does - measure the distance to Venus by sending a strong microwave signal (or whatever frequency it was) and bouncing it off Venus." That was followed with a warning that Venus was below the horizon. "Continue anyway?" Sure, why not. That was followed by a predicted countdown until the reflected signal was received. "Wtf? Why would someone want to run a simulation that's still going to require them to sit around for 10 minutes... before... something...ohhhhhhhhhhh." I turned it off and left the lab. On the news the next day - all the car alarms for (Cadillac, I think) in an entire county in Maryland (near where the satellite dishes, etc. were located) all went off at the same time. That time wasn't given exactly in the news, but was very close to when I was screwing around, making me wonder til today - <Urkel voice> Did I do that? </Urkel voice>

 

[DominionSeraph]

The problem has been SOLVED!

That's what they want you to believe.