Just ran into a blind spot with wireless glass breaks that nobody warns you about

I was installing a Honeywell 5869 in a doctor's office in Cleveland last week and noticed the sensor kept false alarming every time the x-ray machine powered up. Turns out some medical equipment throws off RF interference on the same frequency these things use, and nobody tells you that in the install manual. Has anyone else dealt with unexpected RF issues from weird equipment in commercial sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

tara70015d ago

Started testing a brand new Honeywell unit a while back and a nearby microwave set it off every single time someone made popcorn. Never felt more like crying over a bag of extra butter in my life. RF interference is such a pain because it can come from anywhere like old elevator motors or even cheap LED lights in the ceiling. You either learn to love the struggle or just accept that you'll chase ghosts until you swap frequencies. Guess that's what happens when you try to make wireless work near basically a mini radio tower.

leo_kelly15d ago

My buddy had this same issue but with a completely different setup. He put a wireless glass break in a dentist's office and it kept going off every time the autoclave cycle finished. Took him forever to figure out since he assumed it was just a sensitivity problem with the sensor itself and kept tweaking the adjustment. Finally swapped it to a hardwired unit and the false alarms stopped completely. The RF from that sterilizer was just constantly hitting that frequency.