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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

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:03AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 08 2019, @01:03AM (#840553) Journal
    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. But Glassburn and a volunteer electrical expert finally pinned the frequency to his house and knocked on his door to inform him he had been causing widespread disruption for weeks.

    The man removed the battery, and life in North Olmstead returned to normal.

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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday May 08 2019, @03:16AM (1 child)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @03:16AM (#840609) Homepage

    He's lucky the FCC wasn't the ones knocking on his door, I hear they take improper use of EM spectrum very seriously.

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