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)