L.A. Building's Lights Interfere With Cellular Network, FCC Says 158
alphadogg writes "When a certain Los Angeles office building lights up, it's a dark day for nearby cellphone users, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Fluorescent lights at Ernst & Young Plaza, a 41-story tower near the heart of downtown, emit frequencies that interfere with the Verizon Wireless 700MHz network, the agency said in a citation issued against the building owner. The FCC's message comes through loud and clear in the filing: the building owner could be fined up to $16,000 a day if it keeps using the interfering lights, up to a total of $112,500. The alleged violation could also lead to 'criminal sanctions, including imprisonment,' the citation says."
The building owner is at fault? (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't this a case where the manufacturer of the fluorescent fixtures needs to fix them so they don't emit interference? Don't electronics of that type have to go through FCC testing?
Re:The building owner is at fault? (Score:4, Informative)
If they continue to use the bulbs, yes the building owners are at fault. They cant just point the finger elsewhere once they have been notified.
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I'm imagining emailing the "abuse" contact for a electronics manufacturer about thier abusive light-bulbs, them opening a ticket, emailing you back a month later only to claim that they looked into it and they can't find any abuse coming from thier line of toasters. Maybe a few links to an FAQ about protecting yourself from abusive fridges.
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High rises have not used incandescent builds to light their floors in over 50 years. If you read the article you would have known the interference is due to faulty ballasts in the GE UltraMax line and the company has offered to exchange them for working ballasts that do not cause interference.
You are just another fucking moron.
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Re:The building owner is at fault? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't this a case where the manufacturer of the fluorescent fixtures needs to fix them so they don't emit interference?
That only works before the person/company operating the fixtures is informed of the interference: once informed, they must disconnect the fixtures and cease operating them immediately --- otherwise, they are liable for potential forfeitures or criminal sanctions.
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Chain of responsibility. The FCC tells the building owner to fix their building (which is emitting RF interference), the building owner take the lights down, replace them, and tell the maker of the lights to refund them or replace the lights with correctly working ones.
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The manufacturer of the ballasts already said they would replace them. But the building owners haven't taken advantage of this.
Devices of that sort (unintentional emitters) are subject to FCC regulations but do not go through FCC testing. They are generally self-certified. That is, the makers submits a document indicating they have tested the device and it conforms.
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I think part of the issue is, sure GE will replace them, but who is going to install them.
Most of the time, building maintenance will handle changing out a bad ballast. Telling them to go change *all* of them is a pretty big deal.
In one building I worked in, they swapped all the florescent for LED fixtures. They worked every night for about a month, changing fixtures. It was a hired contractor who did the work, changing *all* the fixtures is way beyond the abilities of a handful of maintenance people.
I
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If the manufacturer is not a US company, the FCC can't do much to stop them directly.
Yes, they could go after other places that use the bulbs, but it could also be a factor of:
1. Bad batch
2. Interaction with local device/electricity
3. age-related
Either way, the manf. will know there is a problem, and will likely address it since they may get bad publicity in the circles that matter to them (business building owners) much like a bad HDD story would circle around slashdot, I'm sure the people owning buildings
Re:The building owner is at fault? (Score:4, Informative)
TFA stated that the light ballasts were made by GE and that they were aware of the problem and had a procedure to replace them.
Probably this is an issue of who is going to pay to replace all of the ballasts... this won't be cheap.
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Umm.. no. One set of devices is sent to the FCC for approval. They test it and then approve it or not.
Something GE changed, or faulty production did not produce a product that was similar to what was submitted to the FCC. They (GE) are aware of the problem, and have a procedure to replace them. Now whether it is the building or GE that covers the costs of actually replacing them is between them, but usually they won't. They will send correctly working parts, but not cover the labor involved with the ac
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the FCC can't do much to stop them directly
They can prohibit the importing and selling of their products in the US. That seems fairly direct to me.
including imprisonment? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who are they planning to imprison for this? The president of the company? The guy who changes out the lightbulbs? Will they build a giant prison around the building?
Neither Ernst nor Young are around to throw in the slammer, both having started their corps. in the early 1900s.
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If they even were tested. Untested grey imports are much cheaper than properly certified light fixtures. A contractor probably has been cutting corners.
Re: including imprisonment? & perfect timing (Score:3)
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Perhaps he meant Mary Jane?
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Obviously, instead of imprisoning any of the current executives (because we can't have that), the building manager will be thrown in prison, because clearly, it's his fault.
Re: including imprisonment? (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? Imprisoning executives? Do you understand how FCC regulations work?
Very simple. The FCC is the "radiowaves police". If you get pulled over in a brand new car that has a faulty speedometer which is showing your speed as 20 mph slower than reality, the cop is still going to write you a speeding ticket ticket. Sure, it is the manufacturer's fault. The traffic cop's job is to make sure everyone is driving at the correct speed. The traffic cop isn't going to drive back the manufacturer and write them a citation.
The end-user IS ALWAYS responsible for using equipment that interferes. It doesn't matter if he bought it legally. It doesn't matter why the interference is being caused. If you have a transmitter that is causing illegal interference, you are responsible. This just makes sense. Even if they went back to the reseller or manufacturer; that doesn't fix the problem in the "here and now". The only way to fix the immediate problem is to compel the end-user to STOP TRANSMITTING.
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The only way to fix the immediate problem is to compel the end-user to STOP TRANSMITTING.
This is true on so many levels.
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Who are they planning to imprison for this? The president of the company? The guy who changes out the lightbulbs? Will they build a giant prison around the building?
They could probably very well start by giving the utility operator a law enforcement order to disconnect and keep disconnected all electrical power service at the location.
They would probably be making the forfeiture order against the company itself.
As for criminal sanctions involving prison time ---- this would potentially go to officers
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I think that it is the board members that ultimately have legal liability for incorporated entities is it not?
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It is not. Corporations are limited liability organizations - They are legally liable up to the value of the corporation. After that it goes bankrupt.
Now, one can sue board members if they were negligent - as in failed to due their duties - not in making bad business decisions. That being said, the are usually only a few 10s of millions of dollars between the board members and their insurance companies (and yes, most of them take out insurance.) so if they caused a multibillion dollar corporation to go bust
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True. But I thought that the thrust of this thread was about civil actions and fines and if one can lock away board members for something the company does. And you can't.
Now, if those board members fail to due their duty they can be sued for money in civil court. If they personally commit fraud that would be a different story - that would be criminal and jail time would apply.
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Yes -- the corporate officers are potentially criminally liable for the acts of the corporation. Assuming that the underlings acted responsibly and according to company policy and direction, then the criminal liability will run upstream, probably to the COO. (Of the building operator, if that wasn't obvious; typically the same as the building owner.)
Incorporation is not a magic shield, however much the anti-corporatists would like you to think so.
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"Must accept harmful interference..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Must accept harmful interference..." (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Must accept harmful interference..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheap switching power supplies crank out plenty of harmonics, and you don't need a very high percentage of the power lighting an entire high-rise to overwhelm cellular signals.
As for compliant lights (and drivers), I think most certifications specify "when installed according to specifications". For an industrial-scale lighting installation, I'd bet there are plenty of places where contractors could cut corners on grounding or shielding, throwing a product out of compliance.
I'm no expert, though, so I'll defer to those who are.
Re:"Must accept harmful interference..." (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that the lighting system uses 700 Mhz, but that the ballasts or other high-energy equipment that is used to power these lights leak RF in the 700Mhz band. Cheap electronics are noisy and they leak out RF like crazy. Hell, just last week I found an old CRT monitor that was flooding out the aeronautical band at about 9,000 mV -- enough for my meter to go crazy over a football field-length away.
Most likely the electronics are not grounded properly, or they aren't properly shielded. That is why the UL and and FCC require certifications on most classes of devices in order to catch this stuff. Of course, with our global economy it is easy to order cheap crap from Asia or elsewhere that was never tested by the UL or FCC.
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Of course, with our global economy it is easy to order cheap crap from Asia or elsewhere that was never tested by the UL or FCC.
Isn't that exactly the type of stuff customs is supposed to be keeping out of the US if not bearing the proper UL or FCC cert?
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not when youre paying $2 for it on ebay and its coming in zillions of tiny packages one at a time
They just have to check 1 in 10 of the zillions of tiny packages, and fine the crap out of the recipient, as in a $10,000 penalty for whoever the tiny package was being shipped to, every time a shipment found to contain uncertified electronics requiring FCC/UL certification for import.
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it should be a $100K fine on whoever was *shipping* it/producing it
The problem is the sender is not in the US and may not even be identifiable. So enforcing anything against them is very difficult.
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The manufactorer may be selling a legal product in many juristictions. It is up to the buyer to determine if it is legal in their juristication.
The people who made it may know but the companies who retail it are not them. And if they are not covered by FCC regulations (different country) why would they care?
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Only if they are aware there is a problem. Mostly they will look, see it is lighting stuff which is legal to import, and make sure the importer has paid the appropriate import tax on it.
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Apparently you don't realize that the UL (Underwriters Laboratories) is not a Federal agency, so has no say as to whether anything can be imported or not. UL approval may be required by insurers (thus the 'underwriters' part of the name) and may be incorporated into building codes, but nothing about UL approval has the force of law.
Re:"Must accept harmful interference..." (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, the fixtures are GE branded. GE has admitted that some of that model have a defect.
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I would guess that the ballasts have plastic cases instead of metal, same for the fixtures. Normally between the housing and fixture all the RF gets stopped.
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Without reading the CFR, 700mhz is probably licensed spectrum, and probably does not apply - licensee takes priority. The lighting system probably is a noise issue, not a purposeful emission.
CM
I thought the 700 mhz band was specifically the unlicensed spectrum we freed up by ending analog TV transmission.
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No, it's the licensed spectrum used by LTE.
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One of our club repeaters started getting a lot of QRM (interference) back in November. It is located on top of a ski mountain in a building that houses a small restaurant. It turned out when they opened the restaurant and turned on the florescent lights the QRM started. At the end of the day they shut off the lights and it stopped. It took the better part of a day for the guys to track down the source, thinking it had to be something like a wireless router or plasma TV. It's likely that it was just one bad
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For the terminally curious, can you tell us how the situation was finally resolved, and how much effort/money it took?
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I don't know what the cost of repair was, it wasn't up to our club to fix it. In fact, I'm not entirely sure it has been fixed yet, but if we don't get resolution we can contact the FCC. We all hope it doesn't come to that, and I'm sure the owner will cooperate with us since we rent space in the same building.
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Part 15??? Ha ha ha..... hooooweeeee..... let me catch my breath......
You mean the part of the Code of Federal Regulations to keep unlicensed RF emitters from causing excessive harmful interference? You mean the part of the CFR's where manufacturers self-certify that they pass? You mean the part of the CFR's where even *if* the manufacturer sends out for certification, they only send a few sample "lab queen" units that have been carefully selected? And where they send it to a lab that has zero oversight
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Paragraph 6 of TFA...
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I never understood what that sentence means anyway. How could you even create a device that doesn't "accept" interference? If you figure out a clever way to filter out noise, you're not allowed to use it?
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If they license (aka "accept a bribe for monopoly use of a free public resource") a chunk of spectrum to your neighbor so he can run a Christian Rock radio station, you have absolutely no right to complain that your microwave, can opener, and dog fountain all buzz along non-stop to Petra's Greatest Hits.
If, however, your blender causes even the slightest bit of feedback for your neighbor's radio station, you can expect th
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Not that I'm a great fan of Christian Rock, but I have to feel that there are more people who would prefer to listen to that genre of music as compared to the random electrical noise of your blender. Haven't recently checked on the popularity of the heavy metal scene, but I think I'm right.
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In the sense that if there is interference you cannot get it resolved by filing a complaint with the FCC.
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Basically it means that if there's some interference that occurs from a licensed user that results in your product exploding when powered on, it's your fault. You cannot redirect blame to the licensed spectrum user. Your product may accept it by handling it safely (i.e., not blowing up) using filters and wh
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The only caveat to this is in the cases of the following:
1) Medical devices
2) Aeronautical devices
3) Emergency Response devices
4) Milspec devices
For these, the owners CAN go after the licensee of the spectrum if their operating even slightly out of spec interferes with the operation of these devices.
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They don't operate at 700mhz, they do use a high frequency switching square wave operating at 30kHz to 100kHz, which produces harmonics at multiple of the fundamental frequency and not enough shielding can lead to electromagnetic interference [gavita-holland.com]
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Part 15 devices may not emit disruptive signals. The devices must accept such interference but the FCC doesn't have to.
Apparently they got the lights from GE who have admitted that some of that model do have a problem with RF emissions in that range.
60Hz flourescents cause headaches and eye strain. Good florescents run at a higher frequency to eliminate the flicker. Going with a higher frequency in a switching power supply also allows for use of a smaller, lighter, and cheaper transformer.
700MHz is quite hi
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The issue isn't acceptance. The receiving devices are accepting the interference. The issue is the radiation:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr... [cornell.edu]
b and c indicate what's going wrong here.
The system isn't emitting on 700MHz intentionally. It's just that the equipment is out of spec. Either it was designed wrong and the proper testing not done or else it was designed correctly and not built properly so the particular units that were installed in this building are out of spec.
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Measurements will reveal that the emitted frequency is actually 666 MHz, pointing to a less divine source. ;-)
RTFA (Score:1)
- Building has non-compliant GI made FL ballasts, that they know there are some defects, it otherwise passed the FCC
- Building management seems negligent on fixing the problem in a timely manner.
An Opportunity is disguise? (Score:1)
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Cheap switching power supplies can still put out a bunch of RFI. Cost of upgrading is non-trivial when talking about an entire office building. If the cell tower is on or next to the offending building it can be degraded by only one or two faulty units.
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uses less power,
Nope.
No commercial buildings are using incandescent lights (and certainly not this one sine they're RF quiet). Modern LEDs and modern fluoresent tubes have comparable efficiency. They both top out at a little above 100lm/W in practical situations.
IOW, LEDs won't save any money at all.
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uses less power,
Nope.
No commercial buildings are using incandescent lights (and certainly not this one sine they're RF quiet). Modern LEDs and modern fluoresent tubes have comparable efficiency. They both top out at a little above 100lm/W in practical situations.
IOW, LEDs won't save any money at all.
I don't think that's accurate. Most LEDs I've seen are a little more efficient fluorescent bulbs, plus they last a lot longer. While the LED bulbs are still more expensive initially in most cases, I think the increased efficiency and longer life will balance out in their favor at the end. You might be right if (only) the fluorescent bulbs were free.
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Most LEDs I've seen are a little more efficient fluorescent bulbs, plus they last a lot longer.
Two things: CFLs are less efficient than standard linear. light fluorescents. Second, commercial CFLs and fluorescents last a lot longer than cheapie ones you might get from most stores: tubes exist for ratings up to 30k hours.
Thirdly...
Our three main points are: 1) linear tubes, 2) longer life and 3) don't forget to compare modern tubes on modern ballasts and starters. And an almost fanatical devotion to the pope
fluorescent 40 watt: $4. led 40 watt: $472 (Score:2)
> I think the increased efficiency and longer life will balance out in their favor at the end.
The efficiency of fluorescent tubes with a modern ballast is comparable. So the only two factors are cost and lifespan. At say 2 years per tube, about $20 will cover ten years of use. With bulk discounts, it might cost half that, $10.
An LED fixture with approximately the same light output is $472. For now, and probably for the next 10 years, florescent, halide, and some other options make sense for bulk light
Have the potential to be lower power. (Score:2)
Modern LEDs and modern fluoresent tubes have comparable efficiency.
In more detail: LEDs have the potential to be about as much more efficient than switcher-ballasted flurorescents as such fluorescents are more efficient than generic incandescents. Actual LED fixtures have been improving and right now are at the point where they're matching and starting to edge past fluorescents.
Give 'em a few more years and LEDs should be substantially ahead of fluorescents. But this year they're just about tied.
(This is
CATV leakage is an issue too (Score:5, Informative)
As Verizon (especially) lights up LTE they bring in trucks that look for problems in the 700MHz bands. They are taking a proactive approach to cleaning up the band before RFI causes problems. This makes sense since LTE uses QAM and high symbol rates to push data, meaning that the carrier to noise requirements are much higher than 3G. Most cable companies use the same frequency band, up to 750MHz. To make matters worse, cable systems use QAM carriers too, so the demodulators can get confused and pick up the wrong carrier.
Cable companies monitor their plant for signal egress from broken coax, cracked housings, poor craftsmanship, etc (leakage), but usually around 115MHz, in the aeronautical bands (since there's been cases of planes lining up on leaks instead of the glide path). Because some types of leaks are frequency dependent, a system that looks great in the aeronautical band might leak like a sieve at 700MHz. In fact a certain set top box happened to have vent slots that made a perfect antenna at 700MHz.
http://www.slideshare.net/Cisc... [slideshare.net]
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CATV is heavily regulated by the FCC, because they use high RF energy that duplicates the RF spectrum that exists outside the cable network. Leaks of RF can and are very problematic for everybody involved. Cable companies are required to do very regular checks of their plant for leaks and if they find them are required to do immediate remediations. While a big focus of CLIs are in the aeronautical band (because of the atmosphere, leaks often go "up" and cause issues for airplanes), the entire spectrum ne
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You're sort of confusing leaks and ingress, but because they go hand in hand you get a pass. A leaking cable system usually doesn't cause problems for the cable system, except that a break in the shield will often cause an impedance mismatch, which will in-turn cause microreflections (standing waves) on the transmission line. I've driven out poorly maintained plants, where my leakage detector never stopped, but for the most part the plant still was able to deliver good bit error ratios and decent analog pic
High frequency electronic ballast circuits .. (Score:1)
Seems like the punishment is directed incorrectly (Score:2)
I'd say whoever made the light fixtures, and sold them for general use emitting that much interference is really the person against whom they should be acting.
The article says the lights are made by GE, who was aware that some of their ballasts were causing interference. IF the building owner was advised, and they failed to replace them, then they're at fault. If GE's replacement program was chintzy (ie they'd replace the fixture, but building owners had to pay for labor, for example), then they should be
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It doesn't matter what GE does if the building keeps the old fixtures in use.
The building management was notified of the problem last April by the FCC. The management claimed they knew about the problem and were investigating. They agreed to send a report of the problem and remediation plan in 60 days. At that time, no fines were contemplated. Here we are 10 months later and no report and no remediation. Given that, the FCC has no reason to believe they'll ever do anything about it without significant prodd
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It doesn't matter what GE does if the building keeps the old fixtures in use.
The building management was notified of the problem last April by the FCC. The management claimed they knew about the problem and were investigating. They agreed to send a report of the problem and remediation plan in 60 days. At that time, no fines were contemplated. Here we are 10 months later and no report and no remediation. Given that, the FCC has no reason to believe they'll ever do anything about it without significant prodding.
Back in April, they had plenty of time to contact GE and insist on replacements and compensation for the cost of swapping them out. Had they done it then, they could have avoided major disruptions.
Bingo. Presumably they could have hired someone to come in with a spectrum analyzer or some such equipment and pinpointed the problematic fixtures... at the least, they could have come back in 60 days and said "we have 10,000 fixtures and we've retained a company to help us identify the faulty ones, but need another 90 days to find & remediate them ("a plan") - and it would have at least shown they were doing something. They chose to do nothing, and it's been the better part of a year - they obviously
fuck em (Score:1)
112 grand fine is cheaper than redoing the lighting system of a skyscraper, besides why is verizion that low anyway
Job killing regulations.... (Score:1)
Funny thing (Score:2)
Just the other day I read in a magazine how a lot of LED lights are not at all EMC-proof. They may have an efficiency of 80+ percent, but they emit radio for the rest of it.
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It's the switching power supplies, that generate high-speed, high power pulses, that radiate if not shielded or filtered properly. This is just an engineering problem, not an innate characteristic of LEDs. Best is to use inductors to feed the LEDs, so they have a constant current.
Newer LED lights known to cause interference (Score:2)
After a bunch of anecdotal reports we did some measurements of radio interference caused by LED lighting (and the power supplies included in these globes).
Most were OK, but there are a bunch that spray out a large amount of broad band interference. Some spectrum graphs are here showing a few lights in their on and off states.
http://www.ledbenchmark.com/fa... [ledbenchmark.com]
Interference was seen in the digital radio bands, FM radio, DAB bands, everywhere really. So the only thing surprising about this post is the lack of pu
Really? (Score:2)
How can these ballasts cause disturbances outside the building? - The building itself will act as a partial shield (try getting a cell signal inside - can be next to impossible) and the basic emission cannot be that powerful.
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The wavelength at 700 MHz is 42 cm, so a half-wavelength hole (less than a foot) will radiate. It can also disperse, attenuate and garble a nice clean signal like your cell phone, so you don't get a clear signal. But hundreds of noisy switching power supplies in a building can generate some bodacious noise outside.
Ha ha! (Score:2)
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All right. I took a peek into comp.misc [google.com] through the Google Groups web interface. What I am seeing there is just more of this "fuck beta" raving and a lot of just general spam. No thanks.
On the other hand, you can filter the posts according to your own criteria, unlike a web forum where the filtering happens centrally, if at all. As was pointed out in another article here just the other day, having the power at the edge instead of the core brings some unique advantages.
If you don't want "fuck beta" posts, there's a regexp for that!
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Because Beta has exposed a fatal flaw in web- based communities, ie that the current owner of a domain around which a community has formed can choose to do whatever they like, the new official Slashdot is on Usenet, at comp.misc and I hope to see you all there.
Eternal September is a free Usenet provider, with the caveat that they do not carry binary (warez+porn) groups. Head on over and get your account today, and then we'll see each other on comp.misc!
The intersection of people who regularly read Usenet and the people pissed off at /. moving past it's late 90's development model is nearly perfect.
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Why not something more specific.
comp.misc.slashdot perhaps?
You clearly don't know Usenet rules. A more specific group for comp.misc would be comp.slashdot. Which could then be split up into comp.slashdot.developers, comp.slashdot.ask, etc. with comp.slashdot.misc for the stuff that doesn't go into one of the more specific groups.
However given the group creation rules (assuming they are still enforced), it would be easier to create alt.slashdot instead of comp.slashdot (alt.ALL is a hierarchy with much more relaxed group creation rules).
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You clearly don't know Usenet rules. A more specific group for comp.misc would be comp.slashdot. Which could then be split up into comp.slashdot.developers, comp.slashdot.ask,
... comp.slashdot.judean.peoples.front, comp.slashdot.peoples.front.of.judea, ...
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comp.slashdot.beta.sucks and comp.slashdot.beta.sucks.comments.sucks ...
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The FCC regulates RF airspace. They are involved with anything that emits or accepts RF energy, whether purposefully or not. They are the responsible federal agency for enforcing this matter.
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it could be great if /. would have separate comment sections. you could go over to the "beta" one and stop being annoyed. or annoying...
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I think that's actually a feature they play to implement *in* the beta.
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