38 ms·
USB 3.0* Radio Frequency Interference on 2.4 GHz Devices (2012)
- jpm_sd 6y ago(2012) It also interferes with GPS and Iridium. USB3 is a broadband jammer. Previous thread on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24707479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24707479
- piannucci 6y agoI work at a lab where this is a major nuisance. I’ve been wondering whether the clock spreading in the USB standard could be manipulated to notch out certain frequencies, like in noise shaping for ADCs.
- voqv 6y agoExperienced terrible headaches trying to fix issues with GPS and USB3 at work. I was also surprised by how sparse information online was. Almost all mentions came from random drone hobbyist's forums when I was searching some time ago.
- anamexis 6y agoAre you suggesting that you got headaches from radio interference?
- neon_electro 6y agoI think they're suggesting that they do professional work on/with GPS and USB3.0.
- jandrese 6y agoI think he was speaking metaphorically about having to fix equipment that was interfering with neighboring equipment.
- anamexis 6y agoAhh, this makes more sense.
- voqv 6y agoAs others have said. I edited the post for clarity.
- ilogik 6y agoyour GPS device doesn't actually transmit anything
- LeoPanthera 6y agoI believe he meant that USB 3 devices were effectively jamming GPS receivers.
- voqv 6y agoYeah, it receives things.
- fortran77 6y agoYou can fix that! Get a BladeRF, HackRF, LimeSDR, and you can transmit your own GPS signals: https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim (Seriously: Don't do this unless you're taking extreme care not to radiate outside your lab.)
- Badfood 6y agoI make gps enabled cameras and am battling with RFI from USB3. Juat ordered a bunch of chokes to try on cables to mitigate. Im surprised this level of RFI is allowed. Either that or these devices aren't being tested properly. Like they are powered up for testing but aren't used with actual data being sent to and from them
- bradfa 6y agoIn my experience, USB connected products are EMI tested only with the cable shipped with the product in the box and used per the product instructions or in a "typical" use. Quite a decent amount of effort and cost is spent for some products to ensure that the cable which ships with the product will properly comply with all regulations regarding interference in the countries in which the product is sold. There's no way a manufacturer could be expected to EMI test a product in every conceivable way a customer might wish to use it. For many products there's simply too many combinations of use-cases or features. So the rules generally require to test in a typical customer use or by following the instructions for use which come with the product. As soon as you start using cables which didn't come with the product, it's on you to ensure that the emissions of the new cable and the product don't combine to cause problems. Some cables (not just USB cables) are utter crap for interference.
- Johnythree 6y agoA well designed product will have good shielding and PCB design, and effective low-pass-filters, all of which keep the stray interference within the enclosure. It should not rely on the cable to meet EMC testing, and the test protocol should define a suitable generic cable. If it does require a particular cable, then the cable should not be removable.
- bradfa 6y agoIn an ideal world, I agree with you. But if you ever try to make a mass market USB device you will quickly learn that the computers which your customers will connect your device to and the cables which your customers will use will greatly vary in terms of quality and compliance to the specs.
- sebastos 6y agoYup, this is well known in the small UAS industry at this point, and I was part of a lab that lived through that "wtf, how does nobody talk about this" experience. It seems like many folks in the space have learned this the hard way.
- pgorczak 6y agoSame here while working on a UAV even though the GPS module was mounted about 20 cm away from the single board computer. We looked at it with a spectrum analyzer back in the lab and the USB 3.0 ports really sent out some wide band interference that covered the GPS bands. Using USB 2 cables fixed it (apart from USB being really not great mechanically for a combustion engine powered UAV).
- nimbius 6y agounrelated but interesting, certain resolutions of HDMI on the RPi will interfere with the 2.4ghz transciever, effectively jamming it. 2.4ghz is like the duct tape of the electromagnetic spectrum...everything runs there.
- garaetjjte 6y agoIt happens the other way too. I once wasted few hours debugging why 4K mode wasn't working on some Mini-PC computer. Turned out that the cause was plugged mouse transceiver into USB port adjacent to HDMI...
- soneil 6y agoIt amuses me that the whole reason 2.4GHz exists as an ISM band, is that the band was too noisy to make use of. Basically microwave ovens came before the ISM band. 2.4GHz is the sweet spot for heating water with microwaves - there's a few frequencies that work, but too high is expensive and difficult to shield, too low requires more power to get the same results. So this band was effectively "written off" by the ITU/FCC as being too noisy to commercialise. The result is a band where you can do almost anything you want, as long as you emit less power than a microwave oven does. This makes it ideal for local-range applications that don't want to deal with the licensing requirements of 'real' bands - as long as they don't mind sharing it with microwaves. It's the typical story of a lightly-regulated free-for-all. 2.4GHz isn't a mess because everything uses it - everything uses it because it's a mess.
- Johnythree 6y ago> 2.4GHz is the sweet spot for heating water with microwaves - Sorry, but no. 2.4GHz being a sweet spot for water molecules is a myth. https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/15/why-are-the-microwaves-in-a-microwave-oven-tuned-to-water/ https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/15/why-are-the-microwav...
- soneil 6y agoI didn't mean to imply it's a magic number - it's a sweet spot as a cross between power/cost/efficiency. The band wasn't authorized for communications until it was already pretty much spoiled.
- lgierth 6y agoYep, lots of interference with my bluetooth headphones. On Linux it gets a little better if you disable the wifi driver option for "bluetooth coexistance" (it's named slightly differently between the various drivers). I don't actually use wifi, but I suppose it's got something to do with wifi and bluetooth being handled by the same mPCIe card.
- comboy 6y agoOr rather (almost) the same frequency.
- mmcgaha 6y agoUSB Thumb drives always mess with my wirelsess mouse. The first time that I encountered the problem was a huge waste of time.
- yummypaint 6y agoI have had USB 3.0 devices cause noise which gets picked up by silicon strip detectors in particle physics experiments. These days its common to have a computer in the target room next to the digitizers to avoid long analog cable runs. Now you have to be careful which USB port you plug into with what device.
- harha 6y agoHave you tried putting a Raspberry Pi 3 (without the USB 3.0) in between and sending the signals over Ethernet?
- yummypaint 6y agoWe have historically avoided using PIs for critical things because of innevitable memory card corruption after a few years. Now that there are means to boot from other storage media that might change. What i would really like is a BIOS option to kill 3.0 capability.
- harha 6y agoOnly model 4 has USB3 (and that one comes with two ports that only have USB2), in case you don't need the higher performance.
- Lucasoato 6y agoHave you tried wrapping everything with lead?
- ben509 6y agoIt's going to be a PITA when USB 832.1 comes out and we need a light-year of lead to deal with neutrino interference.
- yummypaint 6y agoWe do make liberal use of lead in general, but in this case the noise is electrical in nature. The detectors we use tend to behave like radio antennas and so they are well shielded electrically. I suspect the mechanism is the USB 3 making extremely sharp transients that make their way into preamplifiers via the power supplies. It's a slippery thing to track down, though.
- spicybright 6y agoUSB3 seems like such a sh*t storm. Too many features, no standardized labeling for what cables support, not truly reversible connectors, dongles and hubs that barely work unless you drop hundreds, etc. I'm hoping to god we learn for USB4.
- random5634 6y agoLightning
- meepmorp 6y agoCome on, USB 3 was just gustier winds in the Giant Red Eye of shitstorms that is USB. USB 4 will innovate only in respect to how it manages to deliver new dimensions of incompatibility.
- spicybright 6y agoI miss USB2 and such because anything you bought would work for a good amount of time. It's hard to get 4 wires and a connector wrong. I agree that that will be the most likely outcome, but I wish it wasn't going to be that way.
- est31 6y ago> not truly reversible connectors What do you mean by that? USB-C connectors are not truly reversible? USB3 can also exist in USB-A and B variants that are indeed non reversible.
- Black101 6y agoa round connector that can be inserted in any orientation would be ideal... we can only dream
- InitialLastName 6y agoIt's way past time for USB over TRRS.
- 6y ago
- NDizzle 6y agoYep! I have a Jabra headset and I picked up a fancy newish Razer mouse that uses 2.4. Very odd system interrupt behavior slows the whole system down. I changed the mouse over to bluetooth and the problem goes away. It's not as EXXXXXXTREME as using 2.4 on the mouse, but hey - the system isn't so laggy now.
- bradstewart 6y agoInteresting. I ended going back to 2.4 on my mouse as I'd have all sorts of problems with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, and headset connected simultaneously (on a Macbook Pro).
- reaperducer 6y agoI ended going back to 2.4 on my mouse as I'd have all sorts of problems with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, and headset connected simultaneously (on a Macbook Pro). I had a similar problem, and it turned out, I think, to be Bluetooth congestion. I was in an office that was partially a call center, so lots of people on Bluetooth headsets. Plus all their mice and trackpads. Plus their keyboards. Plus regular headphones. Plus plus plus. My desk faced out the window onto a public street. Very often, when a group of people would walk by my window, presumably each with his own Bluetooth devices my trackpad would disconnect from the MacBook. The solution was to keep the trackpad plugged into the machine, since I never took either anywhere anyway.
- bradstewart 6y agoI've been seeing the mouse/keyboard issue at home, mostly. But I'm reasonably sure I've also experienced the Bluetooth congestion issue in a different context. I have an old, mediocre Bluetooth head unit in my car, and it disconnects from my phone ~90% of the time I drive in traffic. Works flawlessly on back roads and the like.
- audunw 6y agoWhat? Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz. I guess it's just a proprietary 2.4Ghz radio protocol (Nordic Semiconductor low-latency proprietary I guess) vs Bluetooth (on 2.4Ghz).
- anticristi 6y agoNothing beats a proper wired network with a proper wired headset. Let mouse and keyboard send their 10 bytes per second wirelessly.
- andylynch 6y agoLearned about this recently - it seems semi notorious as a reason for devices like Zigbee transmitters to have soft failures.
- Waterluvian 6y agoSpeaking of RF interference. For the first time I bought myself nice headphones. And for some reason, unlike previous headphones, I can now hear very clear buzzing patterns any time my phone gets a Signal message. I don't get it. It's not SMS, it's Signal messages over LTE. And the phone isn't connected to my headphones in any way. And it just really diminishes my enjoyment of these things.
- bentcorner 6y agoI'm guessing your headphones are wired? Move your phone and/or its charging cable. If your headphones are wired into the back of a desktop, bad power shielding in your desktop itself can cause similar problems. An external dac can isolate your headphones from your desktop.
- Waterluvian 6y agoOh you know what, I think you just helped me realise what might be the culprit. The cable in these headphones is like 8 feet longer than my cheap-o-phones and so I've run it around the back and to the side of my desk and the back out front. As a result I probably changed how my headphone cable behaves as an antenna compared to the shorter cable that went straight from laptop to my ears.
- sp332 6y agoI can't tell you how to fix it, but it is pretty common. You can put your phone on top of a speaker and hear some clicking a couple of seconds before you get a phone call for example.
- jandrese 6y agoI used to get terrible GSM buzz on my speakers, but that was many years ago. Since switching to LTE I've not noticed it.
- Johnythree 6y agoIt's all to do with cheap and nasty design and the watered down EMC Immunity standards. Rather than meet an appropriate level of RF Immunity, the Manufactures/Importers lobbied the FCC to permit Lax standards and instead rely on a FCC Part 15 Compliance sticker which reads "...this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation".
- dewey 6y agoThis is also the main reason why I'm switching everything back to cables. I can barely use my bluetooth headphones in my flat just because I'm using a USB 3 hub. Headphones randomly disconnecting in video calls is not a great experience. Related: https://annoying.technology/posts/08834ce6ea3edc5a/ https://annoying.technology/posts/08834ce6ea3edc5a/
- munk-a 6y agoThe depletion of ports on computers and forced migration to dongles is a trend I am absolutely baffled by. Whenever I'm given the chance I will always go for a laptop with an Ethernet port and as many USB ports as possible - even if that results in a thicker profile. Weight is something I care moderately about, thinness is something that has zero value for me since we passed the inch and a half threshold. I also, personally, have a strong preference for USB Type A connectors over the Type C and Micro variants, cable stability and port wear is noticeably lessened with the larger cable seating.
- bmcahren 6y agoYou're biased then or buying equipment not to spec. USB-C ports are supposed to be 6X more durable tested to 10,000 connections vs 1,500 for USB-A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-specifications-finalized https://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-spec... I've personally noticed the USB-C is much more durable. Something about the cage of the USB-A catching and bending more easily.
- ethbr0 6y agoI found my MBP ports started getting dicey after a couple years. In that vertical deflection and jiggling was necessary to get a good connection. This was with ~5-10 plug ins a day, 5 days a week, for ~2.5 years. So around 3-6k connections.
- aidenn0 6y agoI've never had a USB-A port die on a motherboard, but I seem to break USB-A ports on cases, and always the same way. The plastic support for the pins that also acts as keying breaks. Probably just that I tend to buy cheap cases. Only port I've broken on my laptop is HDMI. Fortunately it has a thunderbolt port as well for video, but now I need a dongle.
- behnamoh 6y agoUnfortunately Macbooks have an unresolved issue where the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi interfere with each other. I've tried Bluetooth mouses on my 2015 MBP and as soon as I turn on Wi-Fi, the mouse cursor becomes "jumpy" and unstable. It's so annoying that I switched back to wired mouses. It's crazy that the issue was reported as back as 2011, but Apple didn't do anything about it.
- buffington 6y agoI wonder if it's been fixed. I use a Bluetooth mouse with a M1 based Macbook Air, as well as with a 2018 MBP. I haven't noticed any issues with WiFi or with mouse in either. I'm pretty sure I've also used that arrangement with both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wifi connections.
- darkteflon 6y agoI have an M1 MBA that uses a 2.4ghz dongle plugged into a USB-C hub from Anker to connect to a Logitech mouse and have no problems with it. I also have an M1 MM that uses a 2.4ghz dongle plugged into a USB-C hub from Anker to connect to a Logitech mouse and it’s barely usable.
- GongOfFour 6y agoIt's not just Macbook Pros, for which I've also experienced the same issue, but the Mac Mini M1s have flakey bluetooth as well. Many people are experiencing random input lag with them. It's boggles the mind that Apple continues to ship broken bluetooth implementations on their machines.
- asdff 6y agoI notice I can get that behavior if I switch off or on the wifi radio and immediately move the mouse, but I don't notice anything otherwise.
- seiferteric 6y agoAll the more reason to move to optical fiber+power cable like they were originally planning for thunderbolt/USB3.
- Scene_Cast2 6y agoI remember that optical transceivers are expensive. On the flip side, there was optical SPDIF way back when.
- seiferteric 6y agoI know that's is currently true, but at scale can they not bring down the cost for these optical interfaces?
- smitty1110 6y agoThem main problem is that to get high bitrates over anything longer than 2m you probably need a glass fibre. And that increase the cost a lot, and makes the cables more fragile. Corning offers an optical USB3 cable where the optical converter fits in a slight-larger plug, it's not impossible. But most people wouldn't pay for it it when they don't need 50ft cables.
- tinus_hn 6y agoUTP seems to be doing just fine.
- gruez 6y ago>On the flip side, there was optical SPDIF way back when. the bitrates is also much lower for SPDIF. According to wikipedia it only supports uncompressed 48khz 20 bit PCM audio, which translates to a bandwidth of 120KB/s. I'm not sure when it was introduced, but wikipedia says USB 1.x was introduced in 1996 and had a bandwidth of up to 1.5 MB/s.
- arprocter 6y ago
- harha 6y agoI'm surprised this isn't discussed more widely (though even vendors know about this [0]). My wireless Logitech mouse didn't work properly when I had a hub connected to bring some connections to the front of my iMac (both with Bluetooth and the dongle the mouse had a significant lag). It's hard to believe that there is a standard and devices are widely deployed that mess so so much with their environment. [0]: https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023414273-Wireless-product-not-working-properly-when-also-using-a-USB-3-0-device https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023414273-Wire...
- rootusrootus 6y agoYeah I thought it was relatively well known. I have my Logitech wireless dongle on a USB extension cable just to get it away from the hub.
- darkteflon 6y agoWould be nice if Logitech made this information available on their support website.
- Pxtl 6y agoRight? I have a set of 4 F710s game controllers hooked to a pi 4 emulation box and I'd been looking everywhere for info on what to do about their flaky connection.
- TacoToni 6y agoWow, is this why i have lag on my MX Master mouse connected to thunderbolt dock whether im on my mac or work PC? It is frustratingly laggy at times.
- burke 6y agoYeah, if you get a little USB extension cable or one of the Apple USB breakout dongles and plug that into the thunderbolt dock/hub, and plug the RF dongle into that, the problem goes away.
- newhouseb 6y agoI recently built a Bluetooth transmitter that can advertise by transmitting binary bits at 5gbps, which has essentially the same physical characteristics as USB 3.0 [1]. Whereas I used an FPGA, I wonder if one could intermingle the right bits amidst the rest of the USB 3.0 protocol to build a bluetooth transmitter... It's not surprising but still insane that so many USB cables aren't properly shielded, thus making all of the FCC's efforts regulating devices effectively useless as your USB cable turns into an antenna to transmit garbage. [1] https://twitter.com/newhouseb/status/1352796299700162560 https://twitter.com/newhouseb/status/1352796299700162560 (note this is running at 6ghz, but also works at 5ghz w/ more noise)
- cat199 6y agoThank you intel. Had to wrap the cable for my my iogear 3 port USB-C hub in a electrostatic bag to keep it from breaking wifi on my butterfly macbook pro for just this reason.
- Kenji 6y agoThis is well-known. You have to live behind the moon to not know this in 2021. USB 3.0 absolutely destroys WiFi and Bluetooth connections.
- gardaani 6y agoWhen I connect my external SSD to my MacBook, wifi dies because it operates at 2.4 GHz. I fix it by placing a metal plate (such as a mobile phone) over the wire between MacBook and SSD. It also helps to switch from the left side USB port to the right side USB port.
- seanvk 6y agoI wonder if this can also interfere with Ant+?
- meepmorp 6y agoSame frequency band, so probably.
- mfkp 6y agoSynology actually has an option in their routers to "Downgrade USB 3.0 device to reduce interference of 2.4G signal" (so I assume downgrading the USB 3.0 port to USB 2.0 speeds would decrease the interference)
- bradfa 6y agoYes. The interference from USB 3 connections comes due to the 5Gb/s data rate of the super speed transceivers causing interference with 2.4GHz band radio devices. If you downgrade to a USB 2.0 connection you effectively are disabling the 5Gb/s transceivers and only using the 480Mb/s data link.
- CameronNemo 6y agoI wonder if USB WiFi dongles account for this at all.
- ComputerGuru 6y agoThey don’t. Realtek is probably the most popular, and they’re notorious for causing problems over USB 3.
- azinman2 6y agoWonder if this could be relied on for fingerprinting, exfiltration, or other creative uses...
- 0134340 6y agoProbably. But I'm sure it's very short range. You can already theoretically snoop on someone, albeit usually with the resources of a nation state or maybe less, via display RF noise, keyboard noise (both RF and audible), powerline noise, etc. So much of what we do technologically is very RF noisy.
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- ChuckMcM 6y agoAh yes, the Logitech fiasco. It is a great story of how several electrical engineers designing separately, and not understanding software impacts, could make a sub-optimal result. The big takeaway is that at 5GHz signals often "leap off the conductors" at the slightest provocation. And clock skewing and other attempts at breaking data/signal correlation have limited ability to counter this. For a long time I had a USB 2.0 cable extender with an RF choke on it, that I would connect to USB 3.x hubs and then plug the Logitech transceiver into that.
- baybal2 6y agoMaking a USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt device which doesn't kill WiFi when they are working together is really, really challenging, but still possible in practice. Things can go as extreme as covering the entire USB 3.0 lane on the PCB with a solid RF shield from the chip, to the connector. Things such as above preclude any chance at USB 3.0 getting into cheaper product niches. I once looked for a good USB 3.0 testbench laptop to test devices with, but found out that laptops themselves have terrible USB 3.0 RF isolation. I went through many laptops of reputable brands, but the only laptop I seen where USB 3.0, and WiFi were working flawlessly was a very old Sony laptop from 2010.
- FullyFunctional 6y agoAnecdata: Amazingly, I had just minutes ago had to relocate my mouse's (MX Master 2S) wireless receiver because of this exact problem - and it's the example used!
- jmb12686 6y agoI have a cluster of raspberry Pis setup next to my SmartThings hub. I upgraded storage to use external SSDs via USB 3.0 cables. After that, all my ZigBee devices dropped communication with my hub. After some troubleshooting, I just moved my hub to a different room.
- williesleg 6y agoIt's all about the bass
- CharlesW 6y agoPresumably this would also be true of USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 (both which support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2), then?
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoPossibly, but USB-C connectors are generally much better shielded than USB-A.
- CharlesW 6y agoSo it's connector-specific? In other words, if I have a USB cable with USB-A on one and and USB-C on the other, the USB-A connector will be the thing introducing RF interference?
- Johnythree 6y agoNo. There's a long list of steps that a designer can take to eliminate EMI. Things like good shielding, appropriate PCB design, differential cable drivers, and common-mode chokes. If it were a good design, it would work satisfactorily with generic cables and connectors. And if it does require specific connectors (etc) it should not have removable cables.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoNot necessarily, but it's slightly easier to make properly shielded USB-C connectors than it is for USB-A. I'm sure plenty of manufacturers will screw it up.
- del_operator 6y agoPretty sure I encountered this on my Raspberry Pi 4 with WiFi and USB 3 devices. I don’t have a link to the forum, but I thought I remembered a discussion
- del_operator 6y agoOh maybe it was hdmi? https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/raspberry-pi-4-hdmi-is-jamming-its-own-wifi/ https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/raspberry-pi-4-hdmi-is-jammi...
- karteum 6y agoI see a lot of misunderstandings in some comments : we are not talking here about desired RF emissions but about unwanted EMC emissions at harmonic frequencies which just happen to interfere with the regular 2.4 GHz devices.This has nothing to do with how much spectrum is allocated to wifi vs mobile vs whatever... Here it is only about EMC (and it is well known for years that USB is difficult with EMC and it requires a lot of care on the PCB design !). And USB3 is not the only product that leads to difficulties : there are for example a lot of debates (at least in Europe) now with regards to the impact of LEDs (which might surprise a lot of people). Another example are debates on Wireless Power Transfer (which are desired emissions but with very strong harmonics that affect sensitive radio services)
- dgellow 6y agoDo you have links you could share regarding this LED debate?
- Johnythree 6y agoI'm guessing it is LEDs with PWM brightness or colour control. eg the badly designed PWM radiates RF crud from the sharp edges.
- aidenn0 6y agoStrange thing happened to me; I have a bluetooth dongle and headset. If I plug it into a USB3 port, it has a range of about 6". Fortunately my case has a pair of USB2 ports, and my MB has a matching header. When I wired those up, it works pretty much anywhere in the room. Since the BT dongle is a USB 2 device, I would have thought that the port would use the lower frequency and the EMI would be the same as a USB2 port. Not sure why it isn't.
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- alexfromapex 6y agoHad this problem on my raspberry Pis with external SSDs
- AdmiralGinge 6y agoObviously this isn't going to be affecting a huge number of people in 2021, but if you listen to AM radio (I'm a bit of an anorak for Radio Caroline so I've been trying to pick that up) it's amazing how much interference modern devices give off. The monitor I bought last month absolutely wipes out 648 kHz, and Apple's Magic Trackpad 2 is a pretty bad offender as well.
- tumblewit 6y agoThe smallnetbuilder review of AC68u goes into detail on this. But I think newer wifi routers have fixed this that support USB ports. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32239-ac1900-first-look-netgear-r7000-a-asus-rt-ac68u http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/322...
- nonninz 6y agoSo THAT's why plugging any USB3 external HD to my "factotum" home server breaks immediately all my home automation working on Zigbee. And I thought the motherboard was defective...
- thefabsta 6y agoWe had lots of issues with USB3 cameras interfering with (RTK-) GPS receivers for a drone project [0]. When mounted on the drone, the receiver would just not get a fix, even in seemingly perfect conditions, i.e. unobstructed view of the sky, far away from buildings, no clouds, etc. One day, I randomly unplugged the cameras and suddenly the receiver started working. I repeatedly plugged and unplugged the USB3 hub just to make sure I'm not crazy. The GPS receiver would go from no fix at all to centimeter-level accuracy every time I unplugged. We then used a spectrum analyzer to better understand the extent of the interference, tried shielding as described in the whitepaper, as well as separating the components physically as much as 30cm -- all without success. The only solution that worked was to replace the USB3 cables with USB2 cables and acquiring images at a lower frame rate. I don't even want to know how many people have been affected by these issues over the years. USB3 devices should come with a warning sticker on the box. [0]: https://github.com/lis-epfl/vswarm https://github.com/lis-epfl/vswarm
- londons_explore 6y agoDo all these devices therefore violate FCC rules about interference? Should we be asking the FCC to fine these device manufacturers?
- mdrzn 6y agoI'm having a weird issue with a cheap projector I bought on Amazon, every time I power it on, all the devices in it surrounding stop working with WiFi. All my LIFX lights disconnect, my phone cannot see the WiFi signal anymore, all until I turn the projector off. Could this be related? I don't even know where to start diagnosing it.
- evilDagmar 6y agoTL;DR: Your Bluetooth dongle doesn't work because you've plugged it into or right next to a USB 3.0 port which is jamming it to bits. Get any decent USB extension cable and connect it to a USB 2.0 port and everything will be fine.