As grocery store investigates, theories abound in Carstairs

January 31, 2019 11:25 PM

A mystery is unfolding in Carstairs, and its become the talk of the town. It seems key fobs for some cars have stopped working in the parking lot of a local grocery store. People in town are trying to figure out why its happening.
posted by Vesihiisi (37 comments total)

acma.gov.au investigated one of these recently. a misaligned door alarm at a nearby business was jamming keyless entry for cars parked nearby. Lots of good suggestions in the (FB) comments.
posted by alex4pt at 11:57 PM on January 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

if this was in the US they'd probably find someone jamming them as a prank and the FCC would get involved. Seems like jamming devices are illegal in canada too: https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf10048.html
posted by JauntyFedora at 1:09 AM on February 1, 2019

I'm not saying it's aliens, but...
posted by acb at 1:15 AM on February 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

Carstairs has a really amazing cowboy mural, and that co op it has some excellent baking, nothing to do with the story, but thot it could mean something.
posted by PinkMoose at 2:09 AM on February 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

If it's not a leak from an adjacent transmitter (I see a big radio tower out behind the post office and right near the co-op), it's probably the ghost of Tim Horton driving a ghost Pantera to all the Tim Hortons locations in Canada. On February 21, the lights will go out in St. Catharines while Tim sobers himself up with a large coffee at each of the 21 local Tim Hortons simultaneously.

(Also, there is no apostrophe in St. Catharines or Tim Hortons. This sets off my own wireless alarm system.)
posted by pracowity at 2:45 AM on February 1, 2019 [7 favorites]

Seems like a spectrum analyser and a directional antenna would solve the mystery pretty quickly. Electricians are great, but they may not be the best equipped to solve this one.

(As a prankster who despises cars, I hope they publish the details, though of course I'd never make use of them myself.)
posted by eotvos at 2:49 AM on February 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

Thank goodness I don’t have to go past Airdrie for my son’s hockey games.
posted by furtive at 3:18 AM on February 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Tims Horton
posted by stinkfoot at 3:35 AM on February 1, 2019 [40 favorites]

Keyless entry fobs always seem like a bad idea to me. The thing that cinched that was the videos put out by some police departments in the UK showing a team of car thieves hooking a wire to a car and extending the antenna toward the front door of the house it was parked in front of. The increased receiver range caused the fob in the dish or a jacket pocket by the door to unlock the car and turn on the engine. Away it went!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:47 AM on February 1, 2019 [8 favorites]

For some reason, the sentence "A mystery is unfolding in Carstairs, and its become the talk of the town." is giving me major "Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town." vibes.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:37 AM on February 1, 2019 [7 favorites]

Seems like a spectrum analyser and a directional antenna would solve the mystery pretty quickly. Electricians are great, but they may not be the best equipped to solve this one.

The one time I've had to chase something similar (intermittent hours-long interference that was taking out 2 channels on an old multichannel stacked FM link for the best part of the day) it took 5 weeks, two specialist interference inspectors from the local spectrum regulator with 2 cars full of RF identification and direction-finding gear, and was only solved by accident*.

Here's the thing: keyfobs and security systems and garage door openers and all that sort of miscellaneous stuff operate in the various ISM or LIPS bands. Those bands mostly exist *because* they're already RF sewers (e.g. the ISM bands), or they're adjacent to licenced high-power users (e.g. the 315MHz band commonly used for car key fobs is right next to the 312-315MHz satellite uplink band) that low-power devices like keyfobs won't interfere with. And, in general, anything operating on those ISM/LIPS bands has to cop whatever interference from related or adjacent frequencies it gets, so "official" investigations either aren't done or are low-priority unless someone gets curious (i.e. it appears in the media).

(* In our case, it turnedout to be poor/faulty filtering on a VFD motor controller in an industrial plant 3 blocks away. Sniffing/location failed because it was being re-radiated by the mains and popping up at random spots everywhere (e.g. I was out with the RFIs once when they DF'd it to an empty shed in the local showgrounds a block away in the other direction). The source was only located by pure luck - my co-worker who'd discovered the problem (& had been listening to what the interference sounded like when the channels failed) happened to hear the same pattern of sound while walking to the shop to get lunch…

Once it was tracked down the spectrum regulator guys paid the offending business a visit - but couldn't do anything much themselves because the VFD itself wasn't *radiating* noise, and conducted emissions weren't in their remit. They did pass it on to the local electricity standards guys who paid the company a visit. Don't know what the exact outcome was, but the interference stopped after that…)
posted by Pinback at 4:40 AM on February 1, 2019 [23 favorites]

For some reason, the sentence "A mystery is unfolding in Carstairs, and its become the talk of the town." is giving me major "Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town." vibes.


I was ready to start rolling up a Call of Cthulhu character.
posted by darkstar at 6:01 AM on February 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

J. Michael Straczynski:

Fair to say that Martians have a very specific and rather peculiar sense of humor.
posted by doctornemo at 6:03 AM on February 1, 2019 [2 favorites]

How has Arrested Development not made a joke about Carstairs, Alberta yet?
posted by stobor at 6:28 AM on February 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

Not aliens, pixies or fairies.
posted by mermayd at 6:31 AM on February 1, 2019

As grocery store investigates, theories abound in Carstairs: 'Yeah, put your tin foil hats on'

"Sorry, you're in Medicine Hat. Carstairs is that-a-way."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:51 AM on February 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

A longtime employee at the dollar store right across the street from the Co-op says it's all she hears some folks talk about when they come into her store to buy a battery for their fobs — and then discover that doesn't solve the problem.

follow the money
posted by flabdablet at 6:56 AM on February 1, 2019 [19 favorites]

Change the name of the town to Carunlocks?

Threaten the cars with moving to St. Catharines? (I did not know that about the lack of apostrophe!)
posted by wellred at 7:35 AM on February 1, 2019 [2 favorites]

A spectre is haunting Carstairs—the spectre of Bicycle Communism.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:01 AM on February 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

rum-soaked space hobo: do you have a link, that seems.... unlikely. A fob isn't doing anything until a button is pressed and a keyless ignition will turn off if it leaves the range of the keyfob.

Also, Carstairs is an..... interesting.... place.
posted by Cosine at 9:27 AM on February 1, 2019

In theory rum-soaked space hobo's story would work for my keys. You just have to get close enough to the door and press a button on the handle for it to unlock. No buttons on the fob itself. Admittedly, you have to be like a foot away from the car for it to work, so you'd need one heck of an antenna for that trick.
posted by haileris23 at 9:34 AM on February 1, 2019 [2 favorites]

haileris23 : then I stand corrected (and thinking about it now, I knew better) the car is still going to stop when it goes out of range however.
posted by Cosine at 9:39 AM on February 1, 2019

the car is still going to stop when it goes out of range however

Apparently it depends on the car. There are plenty of stories out there of folks leaving their keys at home, but being close enough to get the ignition to start and then arriving at work and being unable to start it up again.

You can pry my keyless fob out of my cold dead hands, but I've never tried to drive away without it. It does beep constantly if the fob is more than a foot or so out of the car, but I don't know what would happen if it was driving. Might have to test it some time.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:50 AM on February 1, 2019

Fancier cars these days automatically unlock when you get close enough, no button pushing required.
posted by sideshow at 10:00 AM on February 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Here is video of a Ford Mustang being stolen in this fashion. (The video is actually mostly of it being tracked down by another wireless system, but still.)
posted by maxwelton at 10:21 AM on February 1, 2019

the car is still going to stop when it goes out of range however

I'll go one step further than Rock Steady and say I'm pretty sure it is the case that these keyless entry/start models generally DON'T turn off if you drive away from the fob. I believe the systems are designed to sound a warning and not allow you to restart the car once you have turned it off, but not to automatically shut down the car while it is being operated, which could be catastrophically unsafe.

Also theft is not the only scenario in which this could happen. I imagine an owner who successfully starts the car because their partner happens to be standing close enough would rather have a warning go off than get stranded a mile from home because the fob went out of range.
posted by solotoro at 10:23 AM on February 1, 2019

BTW, the recommended protection against this is storing your wireless fob in a faraday cage whilst inside the house, which seems offloading something the manufacturer could work on to the consumer, but what do I know about the burdens of our capitalist overlords.
posted by maxwelton at 10:24 AM on February 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

Wow, keyless stuff sucks.
posted by Cosine at 10:34 AM on February 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

My old F-150 could be unlocked and cranked with a flathead screwdriver. Same Starter, Different Day.
posted by haileris23 at 10:43 AM on February 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

Not aliens, pixies or fairies.

Of course not; obviously vengeful rats.
posted by TedW at 1:16 PM on February 1, 2019

Mystery likely solved.
posted by 41swans at 4:39 PM on February 1, 2019 [2 favorites]

My 2011 remote start car will shutoff and not allow me to drive unless I put the key in and engage it. That seems to be the most I'd want it to do.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:09 PM on February 1, 2019

OK, so if "faulty consumer electronic equipment stuck in transmit mode" caused all that trouble, how hard is it to reproduce those conditions?
posted by pracowity at 12:28 AM on February 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

“We want to communicate that this was NOT the result of any intentional criminal activity, or any other activity that was speculated.”

*Kicks dirt* it's never aliens.
posted by jonnay at 5:42 AM on February 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Carstairs is where the high security psychiatric hospital for Scotland is, so before realising this was Canada I was thinking about some high-tech escape attempt...
posted by Vortisaur at 2:15 PM on February 2, 2019

So, a single consumer device stuck in transmit mode can do this for days? (Cheers for fm-capture?) How long do those batteries last? That's impressive.
posted by eotvos at 4:58 PM on February 3, 2019

pracowity: "(Also, there is no apostrophe in St. Catharines or Tim Hortons. This sets off my own wireless alarm system.)"

Only five locations in the US are permitted to use an apostrophe, so St Catharines seems fine to me.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:18 PM on February 3, 2019 [1 favorite]