When I read the headline, I thought the article was about fans (and the attached lights) that mysteriously turn themselves on without the owner doing anything.
This happened to us, and the people we bought the house from had actually bought (but not installed) a new controller. Turned out the problem wasn't the controller at all. Rather, all the houses on the street had been built at the same time by the same company, and most (maybe all) had ceiling fans that came with a remote. Inside the remote and inside the fan was a DIP-switch consisting of four switches, each switch labeled with a 0 and a 1 depending on which way you pushed it. And all probably came from the factory with a 0000 setting.
You guessed it: while ordinarily the controller had a limited range, sometimes (windows open? controller pointed in a certain direction? I don't know) one neighbor's controller would activate someone else's fan. The solution was of course simple: set the DIP switch in our fan and controller to some other setting, like 0101. Since I did that, the poltergeist has been unable to operate our ceiling fans.
Famous past HN discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896371">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896371
>The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining (predr.ag)
1147 points by bonyt on April 1, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 325 comments
mcswell · · focus · HN ↗
This happened to us, and the people we bought the house from had actually bought (but not installed) a new controller. Turned out the problem wasn't the controller at all. Rather, all the houses on the street had been built at the same time by the same company, and most (maybe all) had ceiling fans that came with a remote. Inside the remote and inside the fan was a DIP-switch consisting of four switches, each switch labeled with a 0 and a 1 depending on which way you pushed it. And all probably came from the factory with a 0000 setting.
You guessed it: while ordinarily the controller had a limited range, sometimes (windows open? controller pointed in a certain direction? I don't know) one neighbor's controller would activate someone else's fan. The solution was of course simple: set the DIP switch in our fan and controller to some other setting, like 0101. Since I did that, the poltergeist has been unable to operate our ceiling fans.
bombcar · · focus · HN ↗
milleramp · · focus · HN ↗
veunes · · focus · HN ↗
firefoxd · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46848415">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46848415
a_bonobo · · focus · HN ↗
>The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining (predr.ag) 1147 points by bonyt on April 1, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 325 comments
xnorswap · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway198846 · · focus · HN ↗
veunes · · focus · HN ↗