Comment by smeeth
2 years ago
I had an experience like this once! My my laptop would inexplicably and intermittently stop connecting to the internet.
It turned out my bluetooth headset was using the same band as the wifi but I only figured this out after a few months and a replaced wifi card. I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy.
Turns out most consumer electronics operate in the same unlicensed consumer bands, so your bluetooth mouse, headset, wifi, and microwave all tussle for the same stuff.
I had a fun one where every time I would get out of my chair my monitors would turn off, turns out the EM fields from the compression/decompression can actually be enormous in some cases.
My Mac Pro desktop used to wake up whenever I used a MacBook Pro in the same room. Obvious thought was, maybe the laptop was sending wake-on-lan packets for some reason. Turns out, the carpeting in that room tends to create static buildup, and my MBP's charger was not grounded. Touching the laptop would send a mild discharge into the wall line, tripping something in the desktop's PSU to wake it up.
I've experienced something similar, but the chair's discharge was interfering with a PCI riser, tripping just over some threshold that would cause the OS kernel to panic and shutdown. It felt so incredibly unbelievable when we first noticed the correlation that we called tons of people over to watch us demonstrate it just to see if there was something else we were missing.
> I had a fun one where every time I would get out of my chair my monitors would turn off
Wait, can you elaborate? I have the same and I thought I was hallucinating or tripping a cable somewhere.
https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/f7g1sa/gas_li...
https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-...
https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/09/office_chair_emission...
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Same, my macbook had unusable wifi when playing music via Bluetooth headphones. Switched to playing from my phone, somehow that worked - probably problem with the BT radio in the laptop since I didn't change wifi channel.
Aren't bluetooth and wifi typically on the same module these days?
The worst interference problem I've heard of is how USB 3.0 uses 2.4ghz and therefore can cause problems with devices connected with it.
It causes a big smear of interference but one of the higher regions is inside the 2.4GHz band.
I have a fancy microwave that degrades my fancy bluetooth headset but not others. Did replacing the wifi card work? I'm wondering if I need to switch up my expensive microwave, or expensive headphone, because replacing bluetooth dongle (with another generic one with same chipset) hasn't resolved issue.
Microwaves use the 2.4ghz spectrum but typically not with any real precision which means that while in use they just tank the 2.4ghz spectrum.
*As an aside, one of my favorite things I get to do at work is when onboarding new Jr. Net Engineers is getting them take our spectrum analyzer into our office kitchen and instructing them to watch the spectrum turn bright red while I make a bag of popcorn.
Anyhow to get to your question, the best answer would be to get some distance between your microwave and set-up you're using with the headset. Otherwise if that isn't possible, then you'll want some headphones that does use 2.4ghz. Replacing the microwave will likely not fix the problem since they all use 2.4ghz band for cooking and at least I've never seen one shielded well enough that it didn't impact others while in use.
Good debugging story:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...
I couldn't use my apartment complex's laundry machine if I was still connected to my own Wi-Fi (and using it).
It would interfere with the Bluetooth signal.