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The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

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Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#21

Post by colechristensen »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
EvanAnderson wrote: post #16

Oh, wow. This sort of happened in my life! My grandmother's house is adjacent my parents' w/ 200 ft. between and line of sight. Back in 2013, when my grandmother moved into the then-new house, I setup a point-to-point wifi bridge between them to share my parents' Internet connection and give me easy remote support access to grandma. Summer of 2023 visiting relatives complained the Internet service in grandma's house…

For GHz signals water is a pretty good dampening material, I can tell on some links whether it is foggy!

Your microwave uses 2.4 GHz specifically because it's particularly well absorbed by water :)

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#23

Post by treavorpasan »

thmsths wrote: post #6
treavorpasan wrote: post #4

I expected this The fix was easy: Prune the branches. than >The fix was easy: upgrade our hardware. We replaced our old 802.11g devices with new 802.11n ones, which took advantage of new magic math and physics to make signals more resistant to interference.

Easier, and probably even cheaper to upgrade a pair of wifi transceivers than negotiating with the neighbor to cut his tree.

Mainly because error correction is not free, you pay for extra bits and retries.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#24

Post by fencepost »

Huh, my initial expectation was wrong! I figured (even until close to the end of the article) that the problem was a dramatic increase in the amount of wi-fi or other 2.4GHz traffic in the area leading to interference, some of which was blocked by rain thus allowing more stable local connections.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#25

Post by Waterluvian »

Kind of tangentially related to weird ways tech works: a few weeks ago I finally disassembled my original DMG-01 Game Boy to fix it. There was decades of battery acid corrosion that took a ton of cleaning and resoldering and reflowing the screen connections.

After hours and hours of iterations I could get it to work perfectly, just once, for each cartridge. I would clean it a bit more, try a game, things would work great. I’d try another game and it the copyright logo would fail. So I’d clean it up a bit more. Swab the port and try it again. It worked! Then another game… nope.

I eventually realized that the isopropanol was making a weak connection work fine, and then I guess it just kept working once power was flowing.

No matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to stay fixed, so I keep a handful of cotton swabs and a small dispenser of isopropanol in the carrying case. I’ll swab a cartridge before inserting it and it works every time.

So now I have a Game Boy that requires alcohol to work.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#27

Post by fragmede »

Waterluvian wrote: post #25

Kind of tangentially related to weird ways tech works: a few weeks ago I finally disassembled my original DMG-01 Game Boy to fix it. There was decades of battery acid corrosion that took a ton of cleaning and resoldering and reflowing the screen connections. After hours and hours of iterations I could get it to work perfectly, just once, for each cartridge. I would clean it a bit more, try a game, things would work g…

Ok, Bender.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#28

Post by cookiengineer »

colechristensen wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For GHz signals water is a pretty good dampening material, I can tell on some links whether it is foggy!

Your microwave uses 2.4 GHz specifically because it's particularly well absorbed by water :)

A friend told me once that his mouse stops working when someone is using the microwave. His room was on the backside of the kitchen.

When I took a look at it, it turned out that his (proprietary) wireless USB adapter for the mouse was very close to the band of the noise of the microwave. The microwave was also not properly grounded and shared a circuit breaker with his room, as apparently the kitchen was formerly larger and then split into two rooms by the landlord.

That was quite funny seeing that problem happen in action, he was always joking about a ghost in the machine, and I was joking about him being radiated by his microwave.

The cool part is years later in University one of my commilitones told me that his mouse stops working when the fridge turns on. The first thing that I checked was whether or not there's noise on the power circuit, et voila, easily fixed.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#29

Post by jacquesm »

cookiengineer wrote: post #28
colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your microwave uses 2.4 GHz specifically because it's particularly well absorbed by water :)

A friend told me once that his mouse stops working when someone is using the microwave. His room was on the backside of the kitchen. When I took a look at it, it turned out that his (proprietary) wireless USB adapter for the mouse was very close to the band of the noise of the microwave. The microwave was also not properly grounded and shared a circuit breaker with his room, as apparently the kitchen was formerly lar…

Noise on powerlines is annoying, very frequently present and sometimes dangerous.

Long ago there was this case of a factory that pressed desks out of steel sheets. Their main press (an absolute monster) had taken someone's arm off and they couldn't find the cause. It turned out that near the roof there was an air conditioning unit that that had a flaky relay in it that drew a gigantic spark on disconnecting, enough to upset the latch that controlled the safety interlock on the press, causing the press to move by itself.

It took quite a while to find it.

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