Wi-Fi Cards Can Now Detect Microwave Ovens

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at UW Madison have used regular WiFi cards to detect non-WiFi interference sources like microwave ovens, Bluetooth devices, cordless phones, Xbox controllers and video cameras. They call their software Airshark. Current products like Wispy, Spectrum Expert are expensive and need extra hardware, whereas Airshark is a software-only solution that can directly work on the Wi-Fi cards on your laptops and APs. This also paves way several interesting applications. For example, your WiFi network will not be affected anymore just because your neighbor switched on a microwave oven or a cordless phone — the newer WiFi APs will be able to switch the channels and adapt to the interference accordingly."