Puzzler
 

Fear not. There will be no stories about islanders who always lie and their truth-telling mortal enemies, nor does a clever conundrum hang on an obscure definition of a word.

It's like this ...

Tonight I went out to a Chinese Restaurant to purchase my New Year's Feast.

When I left the house and got in the car, the key fob remote worked perfectly. Car unlocked, I got in and drove to the strip mall.

The Chinese place is on end of the side of the shopping center. It's neighbors are a videogame store, a mortage brokerage, a jeweler, and the inevitable Starbucks. Business was brisk at the Chinese restaurant, so I parked in front of the mortgage office, two doors down. I do not know if this is relevant.

I disembarked from the vehicle and pointed my keyfob in the general direction of the car, as is my usual practice. I hit the "lock" button twice and ... nothing. The locks did not lock. The horn did not give me a cheery, confirmatory beep.

"That's odd," I thought. "Usually the remote gives me warning by not working at long distances from the car. Oh well."

I rummaged around in my pockets and found my spare key, which I've been too lazy to return to the spare key drawer, and just keep stuffing back into my pocket.

Point and a click later ... nothing happens. It was like waving the rod with the rusty star on the end when you were anywhere other than the misty chasm.

I ended up using the keypad on the car to lock the doors. On leaving the restaurant, I tried yet again. I'm nothing if not persistant. Doors would not lock or unlock with the remote. There was nothing else wrong with the car. Ran fine, no idiot lights on the dash.

I get home with the food, and expecting the same response, tried the remotes again.

Both of them worked.

WTF?

Any thoughts?

One or more of the stores probably had RF motion detectors - door openers, alarm system, or a UHF telemetry data link (alarm back up to phone lines) or some other source of radio transmission that was close enough in frequency to interfere with the receiver in your car. They don't make the receiver very robust, just depend on the unique digital serial number code for identification

hard to decode the little burp of data from your hand held fob running off a watch battery when it was deaf from being overloaded. lots of shared spectrum users out there. Your home wireless lan runs at the same frequency (2.54 GHz) as your microwave oven. the 802.11 wireless protocol is designed to tolerate it.

I recommend tin foil hats, heavy duty folded three ply.

I'd guess the jewelry store, myself. Was it next to the mortgage place?

Well, sometimes I like to wave my rusty rod at the internet, but I always end up going to visit the chasm right after that.

Yeppers. Mortgage, jewelry, and then the Starbucks. I was parked between the mortgage and the jewlery.

You didn't have any idea what I was talking about, did you?

Flint was mixing up the orc chasm with the the misty chasm...

Heh heh heh. ;)

To provide anything approaching a useful answer, provide the FCC ID number that must be somewhere on the remote. That number will not give away anything secret. But it may provide enough information to start a useful answer. You know those reading glasses you don't usually use? You may need them.

I bet the star bucks had a WiFi hot spot and All the other potential RF interference ???
I have a site that has radio links from and to 5+ locations , one of them crosses the line of site of the power sataion ( Steel mill , MONDO KVA POWER !!) , Every now and then this station will NOT talk , it is transmitting ( I had a spare radio and laptop running the server soft ware between the power station and the radio and it worked fine ) but it can NOT get thru to the main server , good thing I suggested to the programmer that if ANY of the radios can't talk to the server that it will just collect data ( for 30 days + ) and keep trying untill it can talk to the server .

Zippyt

Steel mills often have electric arc furnaces...really, really noisy for shortwave radio users. Power generators are also very noisy. Without knowing, I'd guess that your line of sight link runs at a higher frequency that would only be bothered occasionally.

Last time I checked, the wireless remote fobs for cars were far enough away frequency wise, that Starbucks Wifi wouldn't interfere. Next time you go over for take-out Wolf, look at the rooftops for radio antennas. Or, if there's a Cell tower there, there may be some other lower frequency teansmit antennas on it. Zoning comittees make putting up a tower such a PITA that everyone piles on (for a fee) if there is available tower space. It's a valuable commodity.

steambender

I agree that I have to return to the scene of the mystery and attempt to replicate my experience.

Why am I suddenly worried that Wolf is going to slip through a dimensional tear the next time she goes there, and then we're all going to have to go find her?

Make sure you note whether you go back during the day or the night--I bet the jewelry store's alarms are only on at night.

Let's get some dwarves ready, just in case. (Time Bandits reference)

Yes, working at power plants, we couldn't use cheap walkie talkies so they gave us 4 high rent Motorola units. They cautioned us to watch our language because they were licensed to Westinghouse Broadcasting (KYW, Philadelphia) who loaned them to Westinghouse power Generation Division. :unsure:
They did work like a champ, though, so they must have been over or under the static band.

Static is a good way to describe it, too.

The interesting thing about making high rent radios that reject the static is that it doesn't have to cost more, sometimes you just have to care about doing it. The next level does cost more money, or size, or space, or a combination. It always costs more (faster) battery drain. That all applies if the static is nearby and can be rejected somehow. If it lays right on top of the signal you're trying to listen to, you may be SOL unless you have some of the sooper secrit signal processing & protocol stuff that the high end designers use for high value comm links. Then, if the manufacturing volume is high enough to justify the silicon investment, we get to go to best buy and get 802.11g dongles for $9.95 that cruise through all sorts of nasty interference and don't complain a bit.

Without information from the FCC ID number, then good luck even trying to guess what to look for.

Are you sure your were not park over top of a secret nuclear submarine base?

I hate to get all spelling cop on your ass in the new year and all, but it's spelled: hoping.

just a frenly fyi.;)

On another note there are certain areas that when I drive by my car doors automatically lock as thoug I had pressed the key fob.

This sets a whole bunch of shit in motion including having to stop the car, turn off the engine, and unlock the car from the outside with the fob in order to get the crooz control to work and the alarm to stop.

Fun!

What's the frequency Kenneth?
 

Ford uses UHF frequencies, and so does GM, typically 315 or 433 MHz. These are popular garage door opener freqs as well. All of the modern ones use rolling code generators - long unique pseudo random numbers that provide unique IDs out of a large population, and are based on the unique fob serial number.

If you've ever added a new remote to a garage door, you've used the training sequence that "introduces" a new remote to the door opener and permits operation. Sneak into your neighbors, and you can teach their door to open to your control... Cars work the same way, a dealer can "train" your car to open to a new fob if you lose the old one, or you can buy a new one & instructions on Ebay and save $60. Needless to say, there is potential nuisance value in this.

That same frequency band is used for military tactical ground, satellite and ground to air voice and data transmissions, and is just 3% below one of the very popular police voice radio bands - 3% frequency seperation is not enough to provide much in the way of filtering, so a likely culprit is a public safety transmission tower (municipal law enforcement, ambulance, DOT, city, etc) or an Airport, all civilian air traffic transmissions are simulcast on Military aviation frequencies to permit dual use of airports.

Now performing a complete car lobotomy sounds more like a really high power signal is scrambling the car computer, not just the wireless entry - especially if power off reset is required to restore sanity. Probably an intentional radiator - Radio tower, or a radar. Usually secret missile bases are much more discreet, and the FCC limits the amount of unintentional radiation to avoid interfering with paying (intentional) customers - so, is there a forest of broadcast antennas nearby, or an airport, or an FCC regional control center (TRACON), or a government or military comm facility, or a defense contractor, or satellite earth terminal, or are you the target of black heliocopter brain wave modification beams?


Again, I recommend tin foil hats, heavy duty three ply. it works for me, and cuts down on the voices...

RF is crazy stuff, buy me a beer and I'll share the secret of receiving AM broadcast using only your dental work and poor oral hygiene...

steambender

I'm prepared for that. I have stuff left over from Y2K.

That same frequency band is used for military tactical ground, satellite and ground to air voice and data transmissions,

Damn Wolf what have you been up to that the Gubment is trying to get you ????

Steel mills often have electric arc furnaces...really, really noisy for shortwave radio users. {snip} Without knowing, I'd guess that your line of sight link runs at a higher frequency that would only be bothered occasionally.

Yeppers they use electric arc furnaces , DC electric arc furnaces , VERRRRRRRRY Powerfull , they have to be carefull not to blow the bottom out of the furnace , NO SHIT !!! The carbon electrode is about 3+ feet accross !!!:eek: :eek:
The only time we have interference ( and I have tested this , with a radio link to the Melt shop ) is when they are "JUKEING " the furnace ( putting the POWER ( KVA's !!! ) ) to the furnace .

Just the usual.

Of course, it could have something to do with that guy ... oh man, that must be it ... the crazy inventor dude with the cobbled together CDs, AA batteries, and wireless mouse drone detectors.