Imagine getting ready to leave your home only to find that your garage door opener and car fob has stopped working. One may think it just a slight inconvenience. However, you then go outside to realize you’re not the only one who is experiencing issues with their garage doors and openers.
The above scenario sounds like the start of a Stephen King novel, but this incident, which left local residents astonished, actually happened in May 2019. The situation was described as car fobs and garage door openers alike having range problems, and they would stop and start working sporadically right out of the blue.
The erratic nature of the problem and intermittent operation of garage doors and car fobs made the situation even more perplex. Homeowners started to notice it wasn’t just them as the reports to city officials started to mount.
What or Who Was Behind the Mysterious Interference?
The mysterious blackout stirred conspiracy theorists who were quick to blame the nearby NASA research facility. Other residents who spoke to WKYC felt it was caused by an incident at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Another theory by city officials is that the cause was an electricity or telecommunications malfunction. According to the New York Times, everyone was eager to locate the source of this interference. Garage door repair companies, volunteer investigators, and budding radio enthusiasts all began to investigate the reported areas. Now, let’s review how things unfolded from beginning to end.
Late April 2019: City officials received more than a dozen reports that the mysterious interference had also affected the neighboring town, Fairview Park. Like North Olmsted residents, they were unable to use their garage doors and car fobs.
May 2019: Once the reports mounted, a retired engineer was recruited to investigate the area. He tried to use a spectrum analyzer but couldn’t find what was causing the problem. At this point, AT&T, FirstEnergy (local energy provider), and a local TV repairman joined the investigation as well.
The repairman’s testing equipment identified that one house was emitting an extremely strong signal. The resident of this home is an electronics enthusiast, and it was his electronic devices that were causing frequency interference and blocking signals from garage door opener remotes and car fobs.
Correspondingly, WKYC and the New York Times reported that the enthusiast had created a homemade warning system. It has been reported that this man wanted to build a system that would alert him if someone entered his home while he was working in the basement. This innocent device was transmitting a 315-megahertz radio signal which is the same signal that is used by garage door openers, car fobs, and many short-range radio applications.
One of the city councilmen, Chris Glassburn, was quite happy to announce to the North Olmsted’s residents that the mystery had been solved. He said to the New York Times: “He has a fascination with electronics”.
Surely, the conspiracy theorist was disappointed to find out that the cause of all this havoc was a homemade battery-operated device, which worked by switching a light on and off. Likewise, North Olmsted’s residents were happy to learn that they didn’t need to have their garage doors repaired, their garage door openers replaced, or their frequencies changed.
Although this frequency interference might seem like an isolated issue, it is pretty common, as any electric device with a circuit board has the potential to interfere with your garage door opener frequency.
