Mystery in North Olmsted solved: Source of key fob, garage opener problems identified
NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- After weeks of speculation, sleepless nights and confusion, the mystery of the key fob and garage door opener problems in North Olmsted has been solved.
The cause was a custom, man-made device inside a resident’s home, North Olmsted Councilman Chris Glassburn announced Saturday afternoon. Residents of Virginia Avenue, Brendan Lane, MacBeth Lane and Terra-Lynn Drive reported they were plagued with the problems for weeks.
So as to not identify the homeowner, Glassburn would only say it is a notification system which allows the resident to know if there is movement in the house/someone is in the house.
There is no malicious intent of the device, Glassburn noted.
Glassburn and Bill Hertzel, a retired communication employee, found the device after a resident agreed to allow them inside a home.
“The device, which ran on a battery backup, was identified and disabled,” Glassburn wrote in a statement. “There will be no further interference and the resident has agreed to not make such devices in the future. There are no implications for the future or other communities in this matter.”
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/05/the-mystery-in-north-olmsted-is-solved-key-fobs-garage-openers-work-again.html
“They began by shutting off the power in the places where they detected the strongest reading for interfering radio frequencies,” said Chris Eck, a company spokesman. But even after shutting off power on an entire block, the overpowering frequency persisted.
Wanda Walker, right, holding the door as Anna Walker carries her daughter out of their car. For weeks the Walkers said the key fobs for their car would not work at home but would work outside of their neighborhood.
Wanda Walker, right, holding the door as Anna Walker carries her daughter out of their car. For weeks the Walkers said the key fobs for their car would not work at home but would work outside of their neighborhood.CreditDustin Franz for The New York Times
“It’s like trying to talk to someone at a nightclub,” said Adam Scott Wandt, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, in explaining how a strong frequency can derail a weak frequency.
Dan Dalessandro, a television repairman, was one of several ham radio aficionados who went to investigate. At first, he said, all he picked up were “little blips” on a signal detector, but on one block — and at one house in particular — the signal was extraordinarily powerful.
By Saturday afternoon, City Councilman Chris Glassburn announced that the mystery had been solved: The source of the problem was a homemade battery-operated device designed by a local resident to alert him if someone was upstairs when he was working in his basement. It did so by turning off a light.
“He has a fascination with electronics,” Mr. Glassburn said, adding that the resident has special needs and would not be identified to protect his privacy.
The inventor and other residents of his home had no idea that the device was wreaking havoc on the neighborhood, he said, until Mr. Glassburn and a volunteer with expertise in radio frequencies knocked on the door.
“The way he designed it, it was persistently putting out a 315 megahertz signal,” Mr. Glassburn said. That is the frequency many car fobs and garage door openers rely on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/us/key-fobs-north-olmsted-ohio.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
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