#4 Wirelessness

Good morning! Its 12 degrees in Covington, at least that's what my wireless thermometer tells me in the bathroom. We also have one in the Kitchen and low and behold it says 12 degrees also. That brings up the old Confucius saying that a man with two watches never knows what time it is. Did they even have watches in Confucius's day?

Anyway back to wireless thermometers, what a marvelous technology. you no longer have to use a wire to make an outside thermometer work. We had one of those when I grew up. Two side by side thermometers with one linked to a wire that wandered out through a window. Now you just have to place a transmitter outside and you can place your thermometer anywhere within a 40-50 foot radius. Our bathroom thermometer also contacts some satellite and gets the correct time and date.

The amount of wireless devices in the house seems to increase every day. It wasn't that long ago that the first remote control showed up. My grandfather had one on his RCA TV. It had two buttons. One for the sound and one for the channel. Today's remotes work on infrared technology. You have to point the remote at the receiver (TV, DVD Player, etc). Wireless phones have also been around for a long time. They work on microwave technology which is the technology of radios. Now I'm no Electrical Engineer (Though I play one on TV), but the key to remember about microwave technology is the frequency of the microwave. Measured in the quaint term hertz. No not the rental car! Named after Heinrich Hertz, a radio pioneer, a hertz is defined as once cycle per second. I leave the cycles to the EEs before your eyes glaze over.

One conflict that I have to live with is home mobile phones and wireless Internet. Wireless Internet operates at 2.4GHz (that's giga hertz). So do some home phones. This can cause a conflict and reduced or eliminate wireless Internet coverage. If you are installing a wireless network make sure you upgrade all your wireless phones to 5.8 GHz or buy the real cheap 900 MHz (that's mega hertz) phones. They list the frequency on the label of the phone! Interestingly, microwave ovens use the same frequency. I would suspect that you don't get very good wireless Internet right next to a microwave!