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Smart Meters Wreaking Havoc With Home Electronics
wiredmikey writes "About 200 customers of the Central Maine Power Company recently noticed something odd after the utility installed smart meters in their homes: household electronics, including wireless devices, stopped working, or behaved erratically. Many Smart Meters broadcast in the 2.4GHz frequency range. Unfortunately, so do many of the consumer gadgets we take for granted these days including routers, electric garage doors, fire alarms, clocks, electric pet fences, answering machines, and baby monitors — even medical devices. The electromagnetic congestion in the home is in some ways similar to the growing electronic congestion in hospitals as they acquire more and more electronic monitors all operating within a few feet of each other. Medical equipment has been known to shut down or give erroneous results when positioned close to another piece of equipment. Such interference is not new, just getting worse — rapidly."
If I have a smart meter I could come home to my dog roasting away under the smoldering remains of his electric dog collar???
Or Grampa break dancing because his pacemaker is trying to tap out the digits of the last hours power consumption???
Eeeeewwwww!
Wireless is the future for many apps - there's no turning back now. My mouse is (blissfully) wireless,
So is my keyboaaaaaaa&^&*!!
hopefully the blasted sound lead will be in the future
If only someone could come up with a way of transmitting audio via radio waves :p
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
But a fire would create carbon emissions and also produce infrared radiation, and radiation causes cancer!
Off-topic but...
I recall when wireless keyboards and mice first came out and one of our managers proudly bought a couple for the conference rooms to save unsightly wires.
Unfortunately he left a spare set in an easily accessible position and, even worse, left them all on their default settings.
When someone who's less than popular is presenting and people have a spare mouse tuned to the same channel you can imagine the fun to be had clicking their PowerPoint slides forward and backwards; even better when the culprits are outside the room.
The fact that the victim had upset the manager concerned did nothing to help his attempts to get sympathy / retribution
When I fire up my 13cm amateur radio gear, I obliterate everything that uses 2.4GHz wireless for a mile or two radius until I'm done transmitting.
Don't like it? Then make sure your filthy unlicensed ISM gear has adequate filtering. Oh, you bought the cheapest crappiest wifi card you could find? Sucks to be you.
It's more humane than the machine gun pet fences...
I have had to re purchase far less yorkies and pomeranians with the electric ones, and the neighbors don't complain about the sound of the automatic weapon fire any more. Note: short hair breeds do not catch fire as easy as long hair breeds do.
But I do miss the sound of, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, YIEEE!, at night as each neighbors dog fence was to go off spraying 5.56 rounds all over the yards to encourage their dog to stay away from the sidewalk.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Considering your machine will be compiling 90% of the time, it won't affect you much at all.