Strange

spree

A couple of months ago I parked in Tallaght village, tried to lock the car with the remote on the key wouldnt lock so just figured the battery in the key needed replacing.
So when I got home remote locked and unlocked the car, and didnt happen again until I parked in the same place, same thing remote wouldnt work and has happened several times since.
Today was waiting at lights near the same spot were I had parked, decided to flick through the radio stations and it picked up BBC 3 (FM). It lasted till I got a couple of metres up the road and the signal faded.
Anyone ever come across anything like this.

Seth Brundle

Them feckers in Tallaght - even stealing radio waves!

a_v525

Lol ^

No, sounds strange tho. Funniest thing that happened with my aftermarket (eBay bought) alarm is that I parked in Naas on the side of the road & Locked my car, and a car 3 cars ahead of mine locked too!! Unlocked, and same happened! Musta been the same frequency, which im told is nearly 1 in a million chance.
Funny experience.

B11gt00e

strange indeed...

Perhaps you should also open up a thread on the paranormal board!:)

I know the area well, and if you're talking about the lights next to the dragon, then you're well away from the mast on the garda station (~400m) and I don't think there's any other communications equipement nearby.

Cool story!

ronaneire

Could be the flux capacitor

Guy:Incognito

From time to time theres a bit of a dead zone outsid emy house where nothing wil lock or unlock for a while at a time. Hasnt happened in ages though.

galwaytt

....well, if you had a recent H-D, this problem is not entirely unknown........mine went awol, and couldn't disarm system ...whilst under the shadow of the Radio naGaeltachta mast, in Connemara...............had to push it down the road a bit, out of 'range' before I could disarm and start it..........

....ditto our crane - it has a remote, so you can 'drive' it without anyone in the cab.........ditto in the same spot.....the 'remote' wouldn't work.........

...another story of a H-D on the quayside in LeHavre/Cherbourg too...........too many marine radios etc.....

....I tell ya, there's a whole bunch of stuff out there you can't see !

bazz26

Something similar happened to me a few years back in my old housing estate. Came out one day to find that the key fob would not open the car, tried the spare key and the same thing. Was able to open the door the old fashioned way via the key in the lock and start the car. When I got to work the key fob worked fine again.

Was chatting to a neighbour later that evening and he had a similar problem that day with his car which was a different make. The only thing noticable was that Vodafone were putting up a new mobile phone transmitter not too far from the estate. A phone call to Vodafone confirmed that they were testing the signal of the transmitter and it was possible that it interupted the IR signal of the key fobs.

I remember seeing two similar looking people to these in the area:

rebel.ranter

spree wrote: »

Today was waiting at lights near the same spot were I had parked, decided to flick through the radio stations and it picked up BBC 3 (FM). It lasted till I got a couple of metres up the road and the signal faded.
Anyone ever come across anything like this.

Hi spree,
yes I have come across this but not with remotes for central locking...something different. Your remote works at ~433MHz which is free spectrum in this country once the transmitters are low power (like your key/fob).

However in other countries that band around 433MHz has not got the same classification, for example the US uses a different frequency 315Mhz or Infared.

There are other devices like wireless video cameras that you can get that operate around 433MHz. Obviously some "genius" out in Tallaght has bought one of these abroad & installed it on his shop.

If you want to sort this problem out report it to ComReg here:

http://www.comreg.ie/licensing_and_services/interference.555.445.html

They would only love to go out & investigate this for you. If you decide to let us know.

rebel.ranter

bazz26 wrote: »

A phone call to Vodafone confirmed that they were testing the signal of the transmitter and it was possible that it interupted the IR signal of the key fobs.

The mobile phone signal would have been at least 900MHz, perhaps your issue was caused by a phenomenon known as 3rd order inter modulation. Meaning some unusual conditions caused a resulting signal close to your remote signal.

Normally mobile phone mast or phone signals should not interfere with key fobbs.

spree

It happens around the area were bank of ireland are, maybe theres some transmitters, dishes or what ever they use round that area.

rebel.ranter

They still shouldn't be using something with that frequency that is powerful enough to interfere with your remote. Doesn't matter who they are.

L1011

The BBC Radio 3 thing is unconnected, there are certain spots around Tallaght and Saggart where you can get BBC Radio 1 -> 4 and Ulster on FM solidly all the time, particularly on a car radio.

Both my cars remote locking works fine around BOI Tallaght though, both up on the pavement parking spaces at Borza and in the BOI underground carpark.

Darsad

I have had some experience of this in a previous life and actually looked at a couple of cars in the North after complaints that some cars would fail to start outside certain RUC stations surprisingly we never got to the bottom of it. I can only imagine there is some weird and wonderful equipment on the mast in Tallaght and certain other high profile garda stations.

L1011

Tallaght BOI and Tallaght Garda Station are quite some distance away though. Tallaght BOI is at the crossroads in the old village (diagonally opposite the former Texaco site) for anyone thats not been there since it moved.

congo_90

This happens where I live too. the road leading to the spar car park has a dead zone where you're radio loses reception or key fobs seem a bit sluggish. always found it strange enough