Vacuum Cleaner Interferences?

Weird, I heard a vacuum cleaner going downstair, and I got disconnected from my wireless connection. Is this common? I never heard of vacuum cleaners interferring with wireless devices.

Thank you in advance. :)

Reply to
ANTant
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of accident sometimes collects in a moment." --Friedrich von Schiller

Vacuum cleaners can induce noise into the 120vac system, which in turn can affect anything on the same circuit or power system. It is due to arcing of noisey motor brushes. I had a vacuum cleaner blow circuit cards in an IBM check processor. It most likely has nothing to do with wireless and everything to do with power. An AC noise filter may help.

cheers airhead

Reply to
Airhead

Even if the vaccum cleaner and wireless router are not even close to each other? It is not like in the same room or downstair. It is like next door.

Reply to
ANTant

Any arcing can also generate RF interference, which can use the power leads of the motor and appliance as antennas.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

Well, that sucks. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

The arcing from the motor is a nice spark gap transmitter with harmonics well into the microwave region. I can kill my wireless

802.11b connection with a nearby electric shaver or AC powered electric drill. The motor speed has to be just right, but it works and is repeatable.

Others have mentioned AC power line conducted interference. This is possible but the effect is probably not the same. In this case, the motor noise is being conducted by the AC wiring, goes through the wall wart power supply, and gets into the access point circuitry. The isolation of the older transformer type wall warts is fairly good, but not perfect. If the access point is sensitive to power supply noise, communications may be affected.

Another possibility is line voltage sag. If the house wiring is really marginal, it might be possible to reduce the AC voltage to the point where your unspecified model access point no longer operates. Methinks this is a stretch as you would also be seeing all manner of other appliances doing weird things.

I good way to test this is to fire up the site survey or signal quality tool on your unspecified client radio. It should give a signal strength and either a noise level or S/N ratio reading. If RF noise is the problem, you will see no change in signal level, but a drastic increase in noise level, or a drastic decrease in S/N ratio. However, if your unspecified access point is failing due to voltage problems, the signal level will also probably (not sure) decrease. If your client radio do not have these monitoring features, you can use Netstumbler on a laptop to extract them.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The vacuum would have to putting out some RF. What was the model? Maybe it was a robot vacuum......Did you try to repeat the problem?

Dave

Reply to
Dave Wendling

Uh, if it has a motor, it will generate some RFI. If the motor is brushless and everything works OK, then the RFI should be small; if the motor is an older style with brushes, then the RFI can be kinda ugly.

In addition to radiated energy, the vacuum cleaner will also produce some conducted energy. That won't matter if all wireless widgets are running from batteries, but if either the laptop (I'm guessing) or the router (I'm guessing again) are plugged into an AC outlet, then conducted RFI could cause problems.

Reply to
Bob Willard

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