Anon must be up to their old brute force hacking ways again

maybe one of the neighbors got an illegal jammer to block cell phones or police radar or something and it happens to effect garage door openers too?

My dad lives on that street. He hates cell phones so I gave him a homemade (illegal) cellphone jammer for Christmas. Do you guys think this might be related???

_{// FSB guys, FSB...}

A HARM should be able to fix that problem

Green sky at morning, neighbor take warning....

/obscure?

This isn't surprising at all if you have a basic understanding of how garage door openers work.

MaudlinMutantMollusk: Someone has their wi-fi router cranked up too high

Wrong frequency range, unless the Wifi's signal is real dirty and spewing out on just the right harmonic.

Some folks claim to have overcome interference/reception issues by extending the door actuator's wire antenna out past the face of the door. It doesn't transmit, so I suppose tuning the antenna is less important than getting part of it outside.

File Photo Fail!

/That's a Man(ually operated garage door) Baby!

Bathia_Mapes: Was it on Maple Street?
Bravo! Link for the Serling impaired (new window)

5 homes in a development built simultaneously. Bulk order on garage doors/openers. Warranties all expired on Christmas Day. Come Boxing Day, they all go kaput.

Most older garage door openers (and walkie-talkies, and RC cars) operate on a frequency that's owned by the military but they never used... They are allowed to do that by the FCC class-B disclaimer printed on each device that basically says "you can do this as long as you don't interfere with those who own the frequency, but you'll just have to deal with it if they interfere with you."

The military has started using those frequencies in recent years. A lot of consumer RF equipment stopped working. Too bad.

/ had to replace mom's garage door opener when an AF base 20 miles away started using that frequency a few years back.

All it would take is something splattering enough to desense all those receivers.

Sponsored link by Mothman's Garage Door Repair.

they should get those new craftsman garage door openers with "apps" that let you remotely open the door wherever you are with your smartphone.

also, why would you want to do that?

Loucifer:

Sponsored link by Mothman's Garage Door Repair.

You might laugh, but it's been coming for a long time. The frequencies have *always* been owned by the US military, but garage door opener companies kept putting out units that use it. 27.something and 49.something MHz.

I can pretty much guarantee that if anyone in that area has an old-school walkie talkie or cheap radio-controlled toy it's going to be unusable as well. It's a question of a milliwatt transmitter nearby trying to out-shout a multi-kilowatt transmitter at the local military base.

paygun: All it would take is something splattering enough to desense all those receivers.

That's what she said.

Not exactly uncommon either. Just happened here (new window) as well

Teen Wolf Blitzer: This isn't surprising at all if you have a basic understanding of how garage door openers work.

But this is Missouri, and we need a plausible excuse when we go to the doctor to explain why our a-holes are bleeding because we've been anally probed.

Look for glowing basement lights at night. You know, life in the BURBS.

Only semi-related, but a week ago a torsion spring on a friend's garage door cracked the same day one of ours cracked. Considering the springslast 7+ years and he lives in a different city it was pretty weird.

/CSB?

Is Ronald Reagan flying in?

We now know where HAARP is pointing.

EMP

Maple St. has been covered, so I'll go with Tom Waits.

What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building
In there?
He has subscriptions to those
Magazines... He never
Waves when he goes by
He's hiding something from
The rest of us... He's all
To himself... I think I know
Why... He took down the
Tire swing from the Peppertree
He has no children of his
Own you see... He has no dog
And he has no friends and
His lawn is dying... and
What about all those packages
He sends. What's he building in there?
With that hook light
On the stairs. What's he building
In there... I'll tell you one thing
He's not building a playhouse for
The children what's he building
In there?

Now what's that sound from under the door?
He's pounding nails into a
Hardwood floor... and I
Swear to god I heard someone
Moaning low... and I keep
Seeing the blue light of a
T.V. show...
He has a router
And a table saw... and you
Won't believe what Mr. Sticha saw
There's poison underneath the sink
Of course... But there's also
Enough formaldehyde to choke
A horse... What's he building
In there. What the hell is he
Building in there? I heard he
Has an ex-wife in some place
Called Mayors Income, Tennessee
And he used to have a
consulting business in Indonesia...
but what is he building in there?
What the hell is building in there?

He has no friends
But he gets a lot of mail
I'll bet he spent a little
Time in jail...
I heard he was up on the
Roof last night
Signaling with a flashlight
And what's that tune he's
Always whistling...
What's he building in there?
What's he building in there?

We have a right to know...

St. Charles? Either someone on the block isn't praying hard enough, or it's Obama's fault.

Old news. I thought they took those remote control penis pumps off the market.

M-G: St. Charles? Either someone on the block isn't praying hard enough, or it's Obama's fault.

I get the Obama dig, insofar as that the county leans pretty heavily to the right (our neighbors across the street have a goddamned Confederate flag hanging in their garage), but the praying? I've lived in the St. Louis area pretty much my entire life and am not aware that St. Charles County is any more religious than most of St. Louis County. The wife and I moved out here (St. Peters, 5-10 minutes north of the subdivision in question) almost a year and a half ago, and it doesn't seem any different in that regard. Fewer Catholic churches and more non-denominational/'general Christian' churches, possibly, but that's not surprising.

Speaking of leaning to the right and religious zealots, how about that Westboro Baptist got called in to picket Zumwalt East & Clayton?

It's the New Madrid fault getting ready to asplode.

Are there wifi routers on the street lights? Where I live there is a wireless router ontop of every third street light. I assume its for the police to get wifi in their patrol cars, but the conspiracy theorist inside me says that it has something to do with the large pharmacutical company in next to our community and their intricate system of tunnels below our neighbor hoods. I believe there is a hive near my building. Like the Umbrella corporation facility in Resident Evil

maxheck: Most older garage door openers (and walkie-talkies, and RC cars) operate on a frequency that's owned by the military but they never used... They are allowed to do that by the FCC class-B disclaimer printed on each device that basically says "you can do this as long as you don't interfere with those who own the frequency, but you'll just have to deal with it if they interfere with you."

The military has started using those frequencies in recent years. A lot of consumer RF equipment stopped working. Too bad.

/ had to replace mom's garage door opener when an AF base 20 miles away started using that frequency a few years back.

According to Google, there are a number of military facilities near St. Charles: Link (new window)

Seeing as how it's only (apparently) one street, though, I'd say that it's more likely that something is operating out of spec, or someone's screwing around with hobby equipment. I have a buddy who spent a number of years working for Nextel, tracking down equipment that would interfere with the network signal... he had plenty of neat stories to tell about the sort of stuff that would cause interference. One example I remember was an area in which the signal would be blocked completely by an interfering frequency on a regular interval of several seconds. Signal fine... INTERFERENCE... signal fine... INTERFERENCE... etc. He drove around the neighborhood with his meters, and eventually found the culprit - a store with a big neon sign on the building. The transformer for the neon sign was operating out of spec and creating radio waves that just happened to be in the right frequency to jam the cell signals. The sign was blinking on and off (or it was an animated sign that lit up different components) every several seconds, which was creating the on-off-on-off pattern. It sounded like an interesting job to me.

In any case, yeah, persons with the right equipment could track down the source of interference pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the garage door companies aren't going to pay for a dude in a van full of wireless equipment to come to your neighborhood the way the cell carriers will, which means you get articles like this talking about how 'weird' it is. You can hope the FCC will come investigate, but that probably won't happen until it interferes with something more important than a garage door opener.

Samwise Gamgee:

[long, well-explained post]

I guess my question would be: Is it really just one street, or is that just the coincidence that got noticed.... And would that street be full of houses built at the same time by the same contractor and therefore have the same model opener?

Either way it's pretty obviously interference, (not of the streetlight variety,) and it is well known that the military is bringing transmitters online that use the same frequency that garage door openers used until recently. When my mom's garage door opener started getting wonky with the same symptoms described in the article (she had to pull *right* up to the door for it to work, and even then it was iffy) I actually tested it with a walkie-talkie set that operated on the same frequency. It was nothing but noise more than a few feet apart. A little googling informed me that yes, such-and-such airbase had just started using a new comm system on that frequency.

What's likely to happen is that their garage door openers will miraculously start working again for a month or two, and then stop working permanently.

One time my CB gradually went blank with white noise and no one could transmit or receive, while I was driving by a busy highway rest stop. Maybe one of the truckers had an amped-up transmitter stuck in the on position. Who can say whether or not it was intentional. But my question is, how do you find and fix interference problems like that? Seems like any douchebag with an axe to grind could drive around causing mayhem and never get caught if there's no readily available equipment to pinpoint the source.

M-G: St. Charles? Either someone on the block isn't praying hard enough, or it's Obama's fault.

As someone who lives in St. Charles. I am getting a big kick out of that reply.

madden101: M-G: St. Charles? Either someone on the block isn't praying hard enough, or it's Obama's fault.

I get the Obama dig, insofar as that the county leans pretty heavily to the right (our neighbors across the street have a goddamned Confederate flag hanging in their garage), but the praying? I've lived in the St. Louis area pretty much my entire life and am not aware that St. Charles County is any more religious than most of St. Louis County. The wife and I moved out here (St. Peters, 5-10 minutes north of the subdivision in question) almost a year and a half ago, and it doesn't seem any different in that regard. Fewer Catholic churches and more non-denominational/'general Christian' churches, possibly, but that's not surprising.

Speaking of leaning to the right and religious zealots, how about that Westboro Baptist got called in to picket Zumwalt East & Clayton?

I think the St. Louis region (at least the Missouri half) as a whole is pretty religious for the most part, compared to other parts of the country. We have a lot of megachurches out here including one that was a used car lot. We're just used to it. Still pales in comparison to Johnson County, KS near KC. They take worshipping Jesus to a whole new and ridiculous level.

As far as WBC...meh. Guess they had to do something to keep relevant I suppose.

nytmare:

One time my CB gradually went blank with white noise and no one could transmit or receive, while I was driving by a busy highway rest stop. Maybe one of the truckers had an amped-up transmitter stuck in the on position. Who can say whether or not it was intentional. But my question is, how do you find and fix interference problems like that? Seems like any douchebag with an axe to grind could drive around causing mayhem and never get caught if there's no readily available equipment to pinpoint the source.

The equipment's been around as long as radio... Just a compass, a loop antenna and a signal strength meter available at Radio Shack. Turn the antenna until you get maximum signal, draw a line on the map along that direction, then drive a few miles and repeat. Where the lines intersect is where the transmitter is.

Wireless companies and the FCC have more sophisticated stuff, certainly, but that's the basics.

The real problem is that enforcing it takes time and effort. Since you use CB you probably know of a couple of lonely jerks with linear amps that blanket a ten mile radius with pointless chit chat every day. You have to REALLY abuse it to get the FCC's attention.

I'm pretty sure the FCC has a "report abuse" page if you have a real complaint.

Came for Maple Street monsters. Leaving satisfied.

Bathia_Mapes: That works, as would "Dark Shadows" fan. :-)

Wow... I thought my mother was the only person who watched that show.

/ that awful, bizarre, hilariously terrible show....

Yep, it happens:

Why garage door openers stop working when the Lincoln's in port (^)