Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Source: The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...adband_lights/ :D

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Saw that a little while ago, thankfully it's never affected my connection in the past evn though the house in Peterborough looked like a reject from Close encounters of the third kind ;) Mind you, we never bought cheap lights so that probably helped :)

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

I never buy cheapo ones either - bought some ones that play all the christmas tunes and the lights go along with the song.... :D

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Well it only affects ADSL by the sounds of it. Oh well! :D

Must have to be some seriously dodgy lights. Hope none of the major retailers are selling these.

I brought some smartprice lights for about £4 seem alright

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

You tend to get what you pay for in this country.

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

thought this was going to be a tacky house light show picture thread

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

LOL I remember hearing once the most commonly broken into homes in Xmas are those with lights everywhere on them.

To the theives its all birthdays in one.

Perfer my Xmas stuff to be indoors and suttle.

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Unfortunately you don't though - that's the problem.:D

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Ah.

"When the lighting control unit is set to any mode other than a steady state it may generate high levels of radio frequency noise and may cause the broadband service to lose synchronisation."

Will it? The lights are probably going on and off at about 1Hz. So you've got a squarish wave which can be expressed as as a Fourier series, that is a sum of sin and cos terms of higher and higher harmonics. Does it actually extend to rf frequencies? I suppose it's possible. Fridges switching on and off used to be blamed for interference. I await a reasoned response from an electrical engineer.

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

I was just about to say that :LOL:

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

You were? Sorry I pipped you to the post. :)

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

It depends as to the type of energy being radiated . All electrical devices create an electo-magnetic field when current flows through them. The CE testing is there to ensure that that radiation is kept to a minimum and devices are suitably sheilded against it. I believe that it is an offence to sell devices that do not meet this standard in europe. If it is radiated rf energy then the low voltage cable from the switched mode transformer to the cable modem can pick this up like a mini anttena. A ferite ring wound around the cable can help supres this.

Since the coax cable on the modem would filter the majority of rf interference the most likely source is reflected rf noise or pulses traveling through the mains system back to the equipment. I decent surge supresor with rf filtering could help stop this happening. After all everyone should have a surge supresor/filter as an absolute minimum, A UPS would be even better :D

It would be interesting to get a set of these dodgey lights and watch the mains supply on a fast sample scope for pulses or noise. The srarp increase and decrease of current that is drawn could well create pulses that cause the problem....

If the problem ocurs when the lights are some distance away then I would go with the noise/pulses down the mains supply theory.

HTH.

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Say wha'..........?!

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Yeah - thanks for all that.
I'd respond - but my brain hurts now....

All my electrical stuff in the house is running through a surge protector is that helps?

:)

Yours confusedly

Dilligaf

Re: Beware Dodgy Xmas Lights!
 

Hmm, very interesting, if you're into that sort of thing :)