http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/147548
Well, there’s an unexpected twist to technology. I’ve heard of phantom effects like oil tanks calling to be refilled, but this appears to be a case whgere there was never an intentional link between the oven’s electronics and the cell phone
My 3 year old daughter has lots of toys that make noise, on some of them they have fairly sensitive switches (you know the ones, you bump in to them in the middle of the night and they start singing), and yet some others have optical switches so they can play a song when you remove a part. Anyways, I believe it’s the one with the optical switches that will start playing every time the furnace fan kicks on. Something about the RF that that motor sends when it first turns on is just right to trigger one of the songs. To the best of my knowledge that toy was never intended to trigger based on receiving some stray RF signals.
Here’s another one that is probably only partially related to what you are talking about. Back when I was in college a friend of mine pointed out that when ever she would turn on her TV, her computer would turn on as well. Tried it a few times…yup, no idea why, but it was certainly happening. My best guess is that the quick fluctuation in power was messing with something inside the computer. Then a few days later I was sitting in that room and her a high pitched 'eep…eep eep" WTF was that. Why is it getting louder, at that point I realized I was turning up the volume on the TV and the ancient Mac was responding to the remote input. I later learned that most Macs have sensors for remotes. I guess what’s odd is that the Mac and the TV both used the same IR Codes for power and volume up/volume down. (or maybe it’s standard)
Weird, man.
Like most gym equipment, the treadmills at my gym have grip sensors that monitor your heart rate. Take your hands off of the sensors, and the readout disappears – unless I’m wearing a heart rate monitor on my chest. Apparently it transmits right into the treadmill, and I don’t have to grip a thing.
I wonder if any of my treadmilling neighbors were getting my heart rate.
Our washing machine turned on a couple of weekends ago while my wife and I were in the living room watching TV. I’m going to have to experiment, see if any of our remotes did this.
The Machines are waking up.
My stepson has a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop which has a built-in IR receiver, and it picks up the signal from his TV remote and will do annoying things like open search windows (apparently it interprets the signal as a “Ctrl-F”). We looked at the documentation for the laptop and it states that there is an IR receiver, but no mention of what it’s used for or how to disable it. He’s had to resort to putting black electrical tape over the sensor to block it from picking up stray signals. (I guess later models had the ability to disable it in the BIOS or through a driver but his is an earlier model that was hard-wired.)
Can’t sleep. Treadmill will eat me. Can’t sleep. Treadmill will eat me.
Treadmills built for the gym trade include receivers for the more common heart rate monitors-usually Polar.
Ah, interesting.
It makes working out very convenient.
There’s an episode of “Ghost Hunters” (yeah, yeah) in which the guys realize their radio signals can turn a TV on and off.
That’s reminiscent of Bronson’s opening activity in The Mechanic. Perhaps Jason Statham will use this in the remake.
Way back when, when cellphones were brand new, and were hardwired into your car, my father had one. One rainy day, we were visiting family friends, and Dad had parked his car part-way into their garage, so he could show off the new phone/toy, without everyone getting wet on the way to the car. What are the odds that the recognition code of that phone would match the code for the garage door opener it was parked under, causing the garage door to close, on the roof of the car?
My IBM T-60 laptop turns on my new Samsung LCD TV.
My routine: Get home, turn on laptop, get changed while laptop starts, come back to the TV on and the laptop ready for action.
Santa works out on a treadmill? :o
It’s not a bug, it’s an undocumented macro.