<story><title>Something mysterious is blocking car key fobs from working in an Alberta town</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/carstairs-westview-co-op-grocery-car-key-fob-1.4999558</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lifeisstillgood</author><text>Can you write this up please - I have lived my whole life with these mysterious radio wave thingamijigs suffusing my world and ... I just don&amp;#x27;t know how to detect them.  TV signals get fuzzy, my loudspeaker crackles just before my phone rings, but being able to deliberately reach out and map them seems almost like magic.</text></item><item><author>Florin_Andrei</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a licensed HAM operator.&lt;p&gt;I would start with just listening broadband with an SDR for a while, just to see what&amp;#x27;s really going on. Something ought to become visible in the spectrum, at least intermittently.&lt;p&gt;Once you get the pattern, you could simply move around and measure the relative intensities, map the numbers, and the epicenter ought to become more or less obvious. Then close in with the SDR, watching the levels on the screen, and hopefully you will walk right into the culprit.&lt;p&gt;An RTL-SDR is a few bucks on Amazon. The software is free. The only other thing you need is a laptop.</text></item><item><author>wolrah</author><text>Call in a couple of ham radio operators who like to foxhunt and they should be able to point you in the general direction of the problem within minutes.  If the effects are as localized as they say it should be able to be pinpointed within an hour.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xnyan</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rtl-sdr.com&amp;#x2F;rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rtl-sdr.com&amp;#x2F;rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They sell a fancy dongle that works &amp;#x27;better&amp;#x27; than an off the shelf model but this $10 model will work just fine for learning: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&amp;#x2F;item&amp;#x2F;USB-2-0-Software-Radio-DVB-T-RTL2832U-R820T2-SDR-Digital-TV-Receiver-Stick&amp;#x2F;32506410349.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&amp;#x2F;item&amp;#x2F;USB-2-0-Software-Radio-DVB-T...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Something mysterious is blocking car key fobs from working in an Alberta town</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/carstairs-westview-co-op-grocery-car-key-fob-1.4999558</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lifeisstillgood</author><text>Can you write this up please - I have lived my whole life with these mysterious radio wave thingamijigs suffusing my world and ... I just don&amp;#x27;t know how to detect them.  TV signals get fuzzy, my loudspeaker crackles just before my phone rings, but being able to deliberately reach out and map them seems almost like magic.</text></item><item><author>Florin_Andrei</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a licensed HAM operator.&lt;p&gt;I would start with just listening broadband with an SDR for a while, just to see what&amp;#x27;s really going on. Something ought to become visible in the spectrum, at least intermittently.&lt;p&gt;Once you get the pattern, you could simply move around and measure the relative intensities, map the numbers, and the epicenter ought to become more or less obvious. Then close in with the SDR, watching the levels on the screen, and hopefully you will walk right into the culprit.&lt;p&gt;An RTL-SDR is a few bucks on Amazon. The software is free. The only other thing you need is a laptop.</text></item><item><author>wolrah</author><text>Call in a couple of ham radio operators who like to foxhunt and they should be able to point you in the general direction of the problem within minutes.  If the effects are as localized as they say it should be able to be pinpointed within an hour.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wglb</author><text>In addition to the rtl-sdr site mentioned in a sibling comment, the stuff provided by &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;greatscottgadgets.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;greatscottgadgets.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; is well worth looking into. I attended his class at Blackhat and it was a blast.</text></comment>