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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."
Most utilities are moving to smart meters. It's a technological nirvana propounded by PHBs and the companies selling the crap. Just think, you don't need to waste hard cash on people actually reading meters. Hell no, you can drive down a road and read all the meters with a laptop. Except you can't because some of the technology is immature and signal strength from these devices seldom reaches the manufacturers claims.
We were told by a manufacturer that their technology was secure because their software is proprietry. It's a recipe for disaster...especially given that a quick google for "security research smart meter," returns some interesting results. Welcome to the brave new world of smart metering. Minus the "smart."
These things are about as useful as tits on a lawnmower. The meters can't even record accurate use if your house wiring is over 20 years old. The power company where I live is having fits because not a single one of the smart meters they installed in the historic district of the town where I live (and I live in this district) is recording accurate consumption. They've found meters read 1kWh for an entire week. In an apartment building with 6 apartments. To be fair, the wiring is about ancient in these buildings. Some of it has cloth coverings. The fuse boxes in most of them still use the old "stick" fuses made out of waxed paper, etc, etc, etc. Breaker boxes? WHO NEEDS THOSE :P
Also of note: the historic district rules prevent people like the power company from installing more than a single meter per standing structure. This makes tenants very happy, as that means each and every single apartment in the district is "utilities included" when it comes to rent.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Firstly a lot of people in here seem to be confusing Smart Meters with Energy Monitors. The former replaces the old dial meter and it supposed to communicate with other meters in the area and/or directly with the energy supplier for billing and better tracking of consumption.
Energy Monitors are those devices which clamp around lines by your meter and communicate to a box in your house giving you an idea of your realtime energy use.
Wireless is the future for many apps - there's no turning back now. My mouse is (blissfully) wireless,
So is my keyboaaaaaaa&^&*!!
Its a common enough tool for people who are to lazy to properly train their pet. The version I know is a wire in the ground that sends a low power radio signal and a collar that detects if it crosses the wire. If it does the pet gets a small electric shock.
In my vieuw (and I have trained a dog to stay inside my parent's garden) this can't be a good thing: the dog gets punished without a clear reason (lazy people didn't take the time to make it clear to the dog it can't go into their flowerbeds). This can wreak havoc on the dog's simple "psyche": I'd expect some to grow fearfull of everything, some to grow extremely viscious and some to go completely beserk.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Says the man that knows nothing at all about RF energy or FCC Type certification.
If a device FAILS because of interference then the manufacturer made a giant steaming POS. Because the FCC certification for that type states clearly.
the Device MUST accept any and all interference.
Blame the moron RF engineers at GE,Sony,Panasonic,LG,etc... for using the china cheap RF modules instead of designing their own RF stage in house.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Better design and manufacturing will help, but at some point we're simply running out of room in a given slice of spectrum. More complex modulation schemes, better-engineered RF stages, and things like TDMA and CDMA, along with more computing power, have resulted in huge improvements in efficient spectrum usage over the past few decades. But we're probably getting close to the limit of what can be done to shoehorn more data into a given bandwidth. Even if consumers are willing, (or forced), to pay more for better hardware, that only postpones the problem for a little while.
Additionally, although the FCC says a device "must accept any and all interference", it does NOT say it "must accept any and all interference AND CONTINUE TO FUNCTION TO THE USER'S SATISFACTION". The FCC may have the power of law, but it has no power over the laws of physics.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'd be curious what smart meter provider they use. While there are some very sophisticated/expensive models, most of them only send very short data bursts every 15 or 30 minutes. Because of this, I suspect this article is just another consumer-paranoia attempt to blame smart meters for anything they can think of.
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