This afternoon, one of my nephews visited. He repairs auto radios and CD changers, and is interested in elecrtonics, so I wanted to show off my BLI E8 and Digitrax DCC system. When I started the system, I could not get it to work in DCC mode. It would not even do the air release noise indicating the decoder recognizing the DCC carrier signal. It did run in conventional DC mode. [%-)]
My nephew suggested it could be the key to his Toyota Prius. Later I found the key fob sends out a radio signal that the car recognizes so the owner does not have to insert the key to start the car. That must have been the problem because later this evening when I tried the system, it ran with no problems.
[#oops] Strange things happen with with all this new electronics stuff!
That’s really strange. Sounds possible.[%-)] More and more new cars are going to that kind of key too. Think of the problems this might cause for clubs running at train shows with those keys in patrons pockets.
Heck, I’m skepical, but I could be wrong. With the DCC signal in the track, and huge, I have trouble imaginging the problem there. I can imagine, although it is a stretch (in my mind), some kind of interference with a wireless throttle system. I think I’d need to see another experiment before I buy this. Like have it working, he walks into the room with the key, and it stops. He leaves, and it works again.
That sounds like a pretty interesting episode to me! Adam and Jamie build a small test layout with DCC system and test the new “smart” keys with various decoders and throttles…
The frequency of DCC signals is in the 900Khz range, car key chips do not operate in that range, but harmonice might be involved here. I would want to see the a test where the key is brought in and out of the range of the DCC signal to see if it truly was the cause before passing judgment on the Prius.
I would cross the following off as an Urban Legend except that I saw a TV program verifying it.
Back in the '50s when electronic garage door openers were a novelty some people who owned them would suddenly hear their garage door opening - or closing - for no apparent reason; at least one person interviewed on this TV program said that he actually had his garage door come down atop his car and a woman testified that on one occasion she had found hers open, had closed it, and hadn’t got back inside her house before it opened again. The manufacturer(s) of these units were absolutely baffled by this strange behavior and eventually installed a cut-off switch to disable these openers.
Naturally, of course, this all landed in the lap of the FCC who discovered that all those having troubles resided in close proximity to the flight path at a major airport; the problem boiled down to a harmonic of one of the NAVAIDS frequencies used by airliners on their approach.
With this story in mind as far-fetched as I might find the idea than the key to a Toyota Prius could interfer with a DCC system it is not outside the realm of possibility.
From what I understand keys and other similar objects with embedded chips don’t send out any signals at all. They are not powered. The receiver in the car or wherever sends out a signal and it triggers a reply or other method from the chip in the key. So I doubt the key had anything to do with the problems. DCC signals travel through the track.
Is it possible that Teditor has spent too much time in a closed room with his model cement? It is possible that the key interferes with the DCC system. In addition to the garage door openers ledgend has it that the early 914 Porsche (VW) was affected by aircraft radar. More recently we found a Caterham 7 we were working on would not start if we got into it with our regular Ford Focus chipped keys. When we called and complained we were asked why we carried our keys in our pockets at work. Seems silly, no? J.R.
I’m going with R.T. Poteet’s explanantion. A friend of mine used to work in a nursing home and she told me that’s a similar reason as to why people with older style pacemakers can’t be around microwave ovens or cellphones.
the manager of a computer service department i once worked in claimed these unexplained phenomena were caused by solar flares . the rest of us had a good giggle about that behind his back , but it was as good a reason as any why we’d get several hard drives with corrupted files on the same day . ( our other theory was poor voltage regulation by ontario hydro )
I discussed this with Mr. Moore and he assures me this is part of a global conspiracy by the Japanese electronics makers to subvert and control all electronic systems. So…blame the Prius.
There are devices which by them selves do not broadcast, yet in the presence of radio waves of certian frequences will broadcast on a totaly seperate frequency.
They do not use any sort of battery or other electrical storage, nor did it have any electrical circuts, but, when exposed to radio waves of certian frequencies, they reflect them back at different frequencies. In theory they could be made extreamly small - even chip sized, if all they were to do is send back one or two specific signals rather than voice transmition as the original which was about the size of a pack of cigeretts and used for spying by the soviets.
When in collage, I had a cheep portable stereo, that with a certian set of head phones, I could pick up the anti-theft sensors, and knew when someone would go through the sensors with something that was tagged, because the tag would change the radio waves of the sensors - so even though the tag didn’t broadcast any radio waves, it did change the radiowaves that were broadcast from another device.
So it is possable that a chipped key could produce some kind of interfearance, even if it is improbable.