Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 16 submissions in the queue.

A Mysterious Force Has Been Blocking Car Key Fobs in This Small Ohio Town

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the three-guesses-and-the-first-two-don't-count dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

For several weeks, citizens of North Olmsted, Ohio—a small town a few miles west of a NASA research center—have been plagued by a mysterious force that has blocked their garage openers and car key fobs from functioning. But after many attempts by amateur sleuths and expert technicians to determine the source of the vexation, the problem has been resolved.

According to the New York Times, North Olmsted officials first began receiving reports about the issue in late April. Since then more than a dozen residents of the town and the neighboring Fairview Park have told authorities about their inability to use garage door openers and key fobs.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/a-mysterious-force-has-been-blocking-car-key-fobs-in-th-1834551015

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
A Mysterious Force Has Been Blocking Car Key Fobs in This Small Ohio Town | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 56 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:00AM (14 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:00AM (#840551) Journal

    The Gizdomo FA is short. The relevant part:

    Then finally on Saturday city councilperson Chris Glassburn alerted the public they had found the root of the mysterious frequency. It was coming from the home of a local inventor.

    “He has a fascination with electronics,” Glassburn told the Times. The man had built a device that notified him if someone approached his property when he was tinkering in his cellar.

    “The way he designed it, it was persistently putting out a 315 megahertz signal,” Glassburn told the Times, which pointed out that 315 megahertz is the frequency that many garage door openers and car fobs use. It was also battery-operated, so shutting off power in the neighbourhood had no effect. The councilperson would not reveal the man’s identity since he has special needs. “There was no malicious intent of the device,” Glassburn told the Times.

    The man did not know that his gadget was causing so many headaches in his neighbourhood.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Informative=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:25AM (4 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:25AM (#840560)

    Thanks for ruining it for me.

    One day it really will be aliens.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:39AM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:39AM (#840568)

      Oh it was, it was. We DNA-based life forms have just been here so long that we like to pretend we're natives.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:40AM

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:40AM (#840592)

        I have no idea how to mod that. Funny? Sure, but it's probably true, so it should be informative really.

        Hmm, maybe +1 Confusing.

        Yeah, that works.

        You're welcome.

    • (Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:20AM

      by Username (4557) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:20AM (#840719)

      Who said he wasn't an alien?

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:59PM

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:59PM (#840964)

      Just an open question here...... how many alien probes does it take before a human reliably accepts commands from their gently probing overlords?

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:01AM (5 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:01AM (#840578)

    Moron couldn't bother to read the datasheet. Giving tinkerers a bad name. Those little transmitters are only supposed to be used in very intermittent service, to prevent exactly this problem. That band is for things like key fobs, remote links to thermometers, doorbells, etc. You power up, blast out a couple of dozen bits of data along with sufficient check bytes and id for the receiver to know it was your gadget and not the gazillion others sharing the band. This spaz apparently just nailed it on constantly.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:19AM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:19AM (#840588)

      Shoulda gotten a Ham license...

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]

      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday May 08 2019, @09:58PM (1 child)

        by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @09:58PM (#841029)

        Wouldn't have helped his application. These 315MHz dodads are CHEAP. Nothing that operates in the ham bands is so cost effective. And if he couldn't understand the datasheet it isn't likely he would have understood (or cared) about the ham regs either.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:59PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:59PM (#841087)

          If he passed his ham license exam, he should have gained some appreciation for why there are ham bands in the first place, and what his cheap-o 315MHz chip would do to his neighbors' stuff.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday May 08 2019, @04:17AM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @04:17AM (#840624) Journal

      This spaz apparently just nailed it on constantly.

      Maybe one of his special needs was an "off" switch.

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..

    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:10PM

      by sjames (2882) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:10PM (#840942) Journal

      Since the regulations only state that transmission should be intermittent, he might have pedantically decided that a continuous pulse constitutes intermittent since the duty cycle isn't 100%.

      That isn't what the regs had in mind, of course.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:14PM (2 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:14PM (#840728)

    WTF have this guy's "special needs" got to do with being entitled to remain anonymous?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:21PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @12:21PM (#840730)

      What skin you have in the game to ask otherwise?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:34PM (#840748)

        Just trying to figure out the difference between this guy and an incel cyber hacker terroristing the airwaves with illegal broadcasts.