On Wed, Apr 2, 2025 at 06:04 AM, Mike N2MS wrote:
Is there interference around the ISM frequencies:
That's what I was hoping a tool like the tinySA could help me determine.
For Wi-fi frequencies, an RF scan from my 2 wired Unifi U6-LR APs shows negligible interference on any channel, on either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands. Unifi is not capable of running an RF scan on the 7 meshed APs, unfortunately. I can partly understand why they don't do so on the 5 GHz frequencies - that would temporarily break the mesh, since the 5 GHz radio is used for backhaul. However, they still could perform the RF scan on 2. 4 GHz channels only, but don't. Having this 2.4 GHz channel scan on all 9 APs would be really useful, since nearly all the IoT devices use 2.4 GHz.
My Toshiba microwave oven interferes with the 2.4 GHz wifi. My manual mentions radio interference when in operation.
In my previous townhome, there was a GE combo microwave / wall oven from the mid-1980s. In the late 1990s, I bought the house, and had a satellite dish mounted on the outside wall immediately behind the the appliance.
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When I used the microwave, the satellite receiver reception was adversely affected. No TV dinners for me !
I'm sure my microwave oven could still interfere with Wifi, but it's not being used very often, probably 5 - 10 minutes per day, and the Wifi issues do not coincide with microwave usage. I later remodeled the kitchen, changed the combo microwave/oven to a double wall oven, and installed a separate over the counter microwave, and the satellite interference disappeared.
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If the microwave interference with Wifi is anything similar, it probably doesn't affect a very large area.
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My microwave oven model is a Panasonic NN-SN77HS. It was top rated in Consumer Reports 3 years ago when I bought it from Best buy. I have no idea how to get information about shielding. It's certainly not in the specs. That said, I have tried placing my smartphone in the microwave oven (not running, of course) and pinging the phone from another device over Wifi, and the ping still returned. I don't recall the latency or packet loss. I could repeat the test, but I don't think it would teach me much, due to the microwave not being the root cause of the problems. But the previous result tells me the microwave oven shielding isn't that good. A perfect Faraday cage doesn't exist, though.
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