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It looked like an episode of "The X-Files": a few weeks ago, in a suburban neighborhood located a few miles from a NASA research center in Ohio, the door openers garage and car keychains have mysteriously stopped working.
Garage door repairers, local amateur radio enthusiasts and other volunteer investigators visited the neighborhood with various meters. Everyone agreed that something powerful was interfering with the radio frequency that many people rely on, but no one could identify the source.
Officials from North Olmsted, a town just outside of Cleveland, began receiving appeals on these issues in late April, said Donald Glauner, North Olmsted's director of security and services, on Saturday.
In the weeks that followed, more than a dozen residents reported intermittent problems operating their cars and garage door openers. Most lived a few blocks away from each other in North Olmsted, though some came from the nearby town of Fairview Park.
All the keychains did not work, said Chris Branchick, whose parents live in North Olmsted. He said that whenever he visited his parents in his GMC vehicle, the keychain would not unlock the car door; if he went to his fiancee Nissan, everything was fine.
"We thought maybe it was foreign or domestic," he said.
Officials from the cable company and AT & T joined in the search for answers, and Thursday Illuminating Company, a local electric utility, sent inspectors to investigate.
"They started off the power supply in the places where they detected the strongest reading to interfere with radio frequencies," said Chris Eck, spokesman for the company. But even after cutting off a whole block, the dominant frequency persisted.
Dan Dalessandro, a TV repairman, was one of the many amateur radio aficionados who went to investigate. At first, he said, he only picked up "small beeps" on a signal detector, but on a block – and in one house in particular – the signal was extraordinarily powerful.
On Saturday afternoon, Councilman Chris Glassburn announced that the mystery had been solved: the problem came from a battery-powered device manufactured by a city resident, designed to alert him if anyone was in trouble. one was upstairs when he was working in his basement. He did it by turning off a light.
"He is fascinated with the electronics," said Glassburn, adding that the resident had special needs and that he would not be identified to protect his privacy.
The inventor and other residents of his home did not know that the device was wreaking havoc in the neighborhood, he said, until Mr. Glassburn and a radio-frequency volunteer struck. at the door.
"According to its design, it consistently emitted a 315 megahertz signal," said Glassburn. This is the frequency on which many car keychains and garage door openers rest.
"There was no malicious intent on the device," he said in a statement.
The battery of the device has been removed and the signal has stopped. "It was a relief," said Glassburn.
More generally, the case recalls the power of radio frequencies, said Professor Wandt.
"They are not inherently dangerous for a human being," he said. "But they could cause mass chaos in our technologically advanced society in a way that we can not predict."
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