This is a story I heard when I worked at the BBC.
Years ago the BBC had many reports of bad reception in a certain part of the UK. Eventually they traced it to a isolated house near a BBC broadcast tower.
The resident had rigged up a big induction coil on his property and he was leaching hundreds of watts from the tower's transmissions. He was using the power to run his house lighting "for free", not realizing he was casting a huge detectible shadow. The story says that he was prosecuted.
If anybody has any hard details or can confirm this BBC legend it would make me very happy.
It’s definitely a legend. The amount of usable power you can extract from a radio signal is minuscule even fairly close to a transmitter. The incident radiation on his property was definitely nowhere even near watts let alone hundreds of watts. Nor would an induction coil or any sort work with respect to power transfer unless it was magnetic coupling.
People seem to think of radio waves as a magical power transfer medium but it’s terrible for that. It’s only really useful for information and no magic stories or hype will be changing that.
I heard of a similar story when taking a tour of a local transmition station as a kid. You can light up fluorescent tubes by placing them on the ground under high voltage power lines, so I'd assume something like that is how this would work:
Many many moons ago, when I hung out in a group that ran CBs with linear amps, we used to win bets with people by saying that we could light up a florescent bulb without any kind of power source... which we did by holding the bulb near the CB antenna and keying up.
I'm sorry to say that putting a coil near a tower would only leech what passed through it, so unless the coil was nearly the same size as/bigger than the tower, and right beside it, and the coil was directly in line with the folks reporting bad reception, this is probably a tall tale.
Not true, the coil emits its own radio waves which are exactly 180 degrees phase shifted with respect to the radio tower. Destructive interference could be measured behind the coil, even when not exactly in its shadow.
Surely a HF signal is targeted at the horizon and in the event someone close enough did attempt to gather what I imagine would be a handful of Watts via induction they wouldn't be a target of the RF energy so it wouldn't really even work. You'd likely need close proximity like of sight to the mast if have thought
Along the lines of looking for "detectible shadows", I wonder if "Wardriving for jammers" would prove interesting in Silicon Valley today. Similar to wardriving for WiFi in the early 2000s.
Most people/companies aren’t deliberately causing jamming or interference. But there are consultants that will help isolate these accidents so the issue can be resolved. Unfortunately the name of the company that does this is failing me right now.
I think when I heard it (from a radio ham in the 80s) he was using bales of fence wire in his loft as his coil. Still that detail about powering the lights (not the whole house) though.
Hams used to put light bulbs on the end of their antennas to light up when they keyed down due to the standing wave on the antenna having high voltage at the end. I suspect that was part of the illusion and the story. It is however pointless and frowned upon as it’s actually detuning the antenna.
The version I heard was a farmer where high voltage lines were run through his property and to get back at the power company he buried a large coil of wire directly under the HV lines to power some of his house.
it's a news organization, they are rewarded for getting views, not getting the story straight. for more information on that see how Orson Welles went bankrupt. big media is a bigger threat to society than big oil and the islamic state combined. if people remember right, corporation's were super anti internet because of competition. so if you think facebook/apple/whatever is bad, you were obviously born sometime after the 90s, not being mean, its kinda the way things were, there are people who want to restore that order, but technology happens and old establishments have to accept that they can either fight the new establishment or evolve
Quoting from the ad: "The BG-E8 signal jammer weighs only 2.3 kg. The Texin jammer consumes 60W of power and has a single channel 3-4W transmitting power." And costs $119.99.
Further quoting from the ad: “ the humidity of the Texin jammer is 30-95%.”
I understand that they are trying to describe the environmental conditions under which it can operate (probably) but it made think of a deliciously moist signal jammer. :)
I understand why they would have a humidity max, but why do they care about the min?
The cost on this is incredible. The amount of destruction you could do with a handful of those. Rig them up on timers in various parts of a city. Crazy.
For sure. Although i think most people with enough radio knowledge to even go down this path also know how trivial it is to track down the source of interference, even for an amateur with cost-next-to-nothing gear.
I mean, I remember even years ago you could buy a GSM/3G jammer from dealexpress and the like for about $50. I assumed it's the staple of any car thief to kill the tracking signals(although "proper" trackers use rather difficult to jam VHF not GSM)
“ Here we have an excellent device for you. Just have a look to understand what it is from the Texin brand. Did you get what it is? I think you got it. Yes, you are right that it is a signal jammer produced by the Texin named Texin BG-E8 which is crucial from different perspectives. If you are in search of a fantastic signal jammer by you can work properly, then I should say that you are in the right place.”
This could be nice to have one on a commute where one person on the train decides to have a loud telephone conversation. And you'll only have to use it for a minute or so; too short for authorities to track you down, and too short to cause serious damage.
And if someone in the next train carriage dies because they're having a heart attack and no-one can call for help (including the driver/conductor), you'd be liable for manslaughter.
Loud conversations in a public place are annoying, but guess what? it's a public space, and you don't have a right to quiet there, let alone exclusive control over radio communications. The sheer entitlement in your post is astounding.
You do realize that you can order all kinds of things on Alibaba? Or even, just from the internet?
I was importing small PCBs and components from china when I was 15. Most of the time the seller would write "gift" on the package.
If the seller writes "wifi router" on the box, is customs gonna doubt it? Sure, one in every X should be getting checked by whatever department looks out for "dangerous electronics" but it's easier than you think.
If no american is shipping boats of these into ports to sell, I doubt customs even looked at this person's small box with one device in it.
Parent comment's linked page has a link to Banggood which no longer works, but presumably it did at one point.
I've bought from there myself with shipping to the US, and I doubt every package gets inspected at customs. Among other things they sell a lot of 3d printing and electronics stuff.
My kids have a super cheap battery driven disco ball thingy that completely obliterates WiFi and cellular when it’s on. Amazing what 1.5v and an unshielded motor can do! Took me a long time to work out what was going on. When we worked out the correlation it was super easy to test though. And yeah, turning on that little disco globe just killed the WiFi.
Reminds me of many years ago when my coworker's monitor was flickering. So we replaced the monitor. Same problem. We replaced cords. Same problem. We replaced the computer. Same problem. Eventually we put his monitor and computer on a cart with an extension cord and wheeled it into the hallway. Problem went away.
It turned out his room had bad electrical shielding and magnetic interference was janking up the CRT monitors.
When working for an ISP I was told a story of a huge amount of noise getting into the system sporadically on a node in a neighborhood. Happened during a certain time only about once a week and only for about 15-20 minutes. They finally tracked it down to some guys electric weed wacker. They bought him a brand new one and took the offending one. I guess it was bringing the service to its knees every time he used it.
A quick google search of the product name (BG-E8 5G Signal Jammer) from the pictures in a linked article[0] indicate it costs a few hundred dollars and uses 30W, with a range of about 250m. Wonder how modified it can be, or how varied those specs may be.
These are much simpler. Usually just a 555 setup as a triangle wave generator connected to a series of voltage controlled oscillator chips with a small amp, one per antenna.
I'm sure this doesn't quite work, but a defense could be around a technicality like radio transmissions being federal jurisdiction or an improper warrant.
I have no reason to believe that the picture in their tweet was the item seized in this instance. They could be using a stock photo. But hey, why worry about tainting the jury pool, right? Guilty!
Why is the police involved in this? In Norway this task and authority is given to The Norwegian Communications Authority (Nkom), that deal with everything regarding the radio spectrum. They have more power to enter people’s homes than the police. Only if they can not enter they can ask for backup from the police.
Generally speaking only US law enforcement has the right to enter a home, and they usually need a warrant to do it (or "probable cause")
The relevant regulatory agency in this case would likely be the FCC, and they are not law enforcement. Law enforcement matters they would delegate to the courts and the police or the FBI
FCC field agents have the authority to enter many sites for inspections and can issue orders or gather evidence used for fines [0]. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until these field agents are turned in to full police, as the federal government already has hundreds of law enforcement organizations [1]
Readit News
If anybody has any hard details or can confirm this BBC legend it would make me very happy.
People seem to think of radio waves as a magical power transfer medium but it’s terrible for that. It’s only really useful for information and no magic stories or hype will be changing that.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/old-t...
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/feb/26/thisweekssci...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhZvyGtMrk
https://www.gps.gov/spectrum/jamming/
People’s misunderstanding of mutual inductance does not surprise me really.
Plenty of flaws (is anything ever otherwise?) but it does try to aim at public interest more than eyeball count.
https://www.xiaomitoday.com/product/texin-bg-e8/
Quoting from the ad: "The BG-E8 signal jammer weighs only 2.3 kg. The Texin jammer consumes 60W of power and has a single channel 3-4W transmitting power." And costs $119.99.
I understand that they are trying to describe the environmental conditions under which it can operate (probably) but it made think of a deliciously moist signal jammer. :)
I understand why they would have a humidity max, but why do they care about the min?
“ Here we have an excellent device for you. Just have a look to understand what it is from the Texin brand. Did you get what it is? I think you got it. Yes, you are right that it is a signal jammer produced by the Texin named Texin BG-E8 which is crucial from different perspectives. If you are in search of a fantastic signal jammer by you can work properly, then I should say that you are in the right place.”
Deleted Comment
Loud conversations in a public place are annoying, but guess what? it's a public space, and you don't have a right to quiet there, let alone exclusive control over radio communications. The sheer entitlement in your post is astounding.
How does this stuff makes it to the USA?
I was importing small PCBs and components from china when I was 15. Most of the time the seller would write "gift" on the package.
If the seller writes "wifi router" on the box, is customs gonna doubt it? Sure, one in every X should be getting checked by whatever department looks out for "dangerous electronics" but it's easier than you think.
If no american is shipping boats of these into ports to sell, I doubt customs even looked at this person's small box with one device in it.
I've bought from there myself with shipping to the US, and I doubt every package gets inspected at customs. Among other things they sell a lot of 3d printing and electronics stuff.
It turned out his room had bad electrical shielding and magnetic interference was janking up the CRT monitors.
Latest one:
https://www.anfr.fr/toutes-les-actualites/actualites/les-enq...
Starting points:
https://www.anfr.fr/publications/rapports-dintervention/brou...
https://www.anfr.fr/publications/lettres-dinformation/liste-...
Also lots of opendata about towers, phones and radio measurements all over the country including interactive map:
https://www.anfr.fr/toutes-les-actualites/actualites/les-don...
Someone did a map of all licenced radio links from this data:
https://carte-fh.lafibre.info/index.php?op_init=137
[0] https://morganhilltimes.com/police-locate-signal-jamming-dev...
How many people do you think follow that twitter account?
Even if half the citizens have prior knowledge of a case, you'd just pick the jury out of the other half.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210827050158/https://www.mercu...
Somewhat interestingly, the photo is no longer in the story, hence the wayback link. Though the hi-res photo itself remains:
https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/SJM-L...
The relevant regulatory agency in this case would likely be the FCC, and they are not law enforcement. Law enforcement matters they would delegate to the courts and the police or the FBI
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_t...
1: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/public_enforcement_o...
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28339867