airport extreme triggering IR sensor

[537635]

This is what the setup looks like:

Airport Extreme has been there for about 6 months (working only with g/n wifi clients). Last week I bought a 13'' rmbp. Today I started copying a rather large movie collection from NAS to an external USB disk over a/c wifi.

As stated in the title, the IR switch above the door started turning on (every couple of minutes). After the transfer ended, it stopped. I tried a couple of times copying 50GB batches and every time it was the same - lights kept turning on.

I cannot think of any other reason than the EM radiation of the router being strong enough to trigger the IR switch. Surely I am not a "tinfoil hat" person, but this is a bit unsettling...

 

[ColdCase]

Yeah, sounds like some radio interference getting into the switch circuits, lots of possibilities including poor or open grounds and poorly shielded IR switch to an AE power supply blasting out interference. If it bothers you, try different AC outlets and perhaps some switch shielding. Perhaps run some aux ground wires. Check the outlet for proper grounding (in the US the white side of a two prong is grounded at the circuit breaker panel).

 

[537635]

Weird thing is that it started happening only now, when a/c transfers are active. Before there were no problems whatsoever (either when I used gigabit LAN and/or wifi g/n. Grounding is definitely sufficient and besides the AE and NAS are connected to an UPS. I am pretty certain it's the EM radiation.

The IR switch is 20 years old, I'll give it that. Still, it worked fine until now.

 

[ColdCase]

Well a/c has more bandwidth, uses a different modulation scheme and can use beam forming. Perhaps try a different airport channel?

EMI can be like black magic sometimes.