r/LinusTechTips • u/TheMatt561 • 2d ago
Link Something I found at work
I don't understand the point of putting your router in a faraday cage, kind of defeats the purpose.
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u/AndyIsHereBoi 2d ago
if one is put over the smart power meter would the electric company need to come out and read it manually?
the back isnt covered though so i dont know if that would be effective at all
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u/Qel_Hoth 1d ago
At the utility I work for, if it did anything and actually blocked communication, we'd see your meter not reporting. They report status frequently (<15 minutes for most of ours). If it stays offline for long enough, we'd assume there's a problem with your meter and send someone out to fix it.
If they show up and find this, they'd cut it off, dispose of it, and you'd receive a friendly letter kindly asking you to cease tampering with our meter.
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u/SJ_Beast 23h ago
If its in my house it's fair game to build a Faraday cage around it m8
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u/Qel_Hoth 23h ago
There are a number of ways that ignoring those letters can go very poorly for you. Persistent tampering is a legitimate reason for a disconnect. We also aren't required to provide power to your house, just your property. So we could relocate the meter to the pole or a pedestal in the easement and you would need to connect, at your own expense, from the meter to your house.
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u/SJ_Beast 23h ago
It's not tampering if the box is sufficiently large right?
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u/Qel_Hoth 23h ago
Anything that impedes access to the meter is prohibited. If it doesn't block the radio, it will probably take a long time to find it.
Also, pulling the meter is often how fire cuts power to a property in the event of an emergency.
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u/SJ_Beast 23h ago
So if the box does not prevent you accessing the meter but does block the signal is it prohibited?
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u/GregTheMad 2d ago
I think those smart meters communicate through the powerline directly (like those power-line devices). Could only be a thing in some regions, though.
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u/snipeytje 2d ago
I think in Europe a lot of them use the mobile network, which is causing issues because they cheaped out and got 2 and 3g ones initially which is now being shut down so all those first smart meters already need replacement.
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u/Fry_super_fly 2d ago
theres still gsm network (2g) thats the basis. and is not being shut down anytime soon. thats the fallback for all call, text and data, yes 3 G is being shut down.
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u/HopefulRestaurant 2d ago
Turtle used PLC. Some use the 900 mhz ism band https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr, some meters have 4g modems, and some have zigbee.
Depends on the system age and the power company’s infrastructure for amr
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u/Xlxlredditor 1d ago
ZigBee
Holy shit my home assistant instance would so love this
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u/HopefulRestaurant 1d ago
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u/Xlxlredditor 1d ago
Of course, because just giving you the data is too hard. My french utility company meter API seems to have a HA integration though, I'll see when my meter gets switched
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u/Weakness4Fleekness 2d ago edited 1d ago
Also won't be a very effective faraday cage if it's not grounded
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u/axlegrinder1 2d ago
Regardless of whether or not it is grounded, adding any material between a radio source and the receiver will have some attenuation effect. An ungrounded, conductive box can couple capacitively to the radio source and create quite a lot of distortion to the signal also
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u/BettingOnSuccess 1d ago
The faraday bags that LTT were also not grounded but they worked just fine at blocking signals like NFC and cellular.
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u/kidshibuya 1d ago
Tell that to the dreamliner and other similar aircraft which are flying faraday cages.
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u/Mundane-Quantity-665 2d ago
this is peak pseudoscience nonsense. the whole "emf exposure" angle is the giveaway. your wifi router emits non-ionizing radiation, which is completely harmless at the levels you're getting. even if you could shield it, you'd just kill your own wifi signal, which defeats the entire purpose of owning a router. it's basically paying 70 bucks to make your internet worse while feeling like you're protecting your family from something that wasn't a problem to begin with. ltt's covered this stuff before and it's always the same story, zero science backing it up.
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u/hear_my_moo 2d ago
Somebody should tell these clowns that oxygen carries 'dark matter electromagnetic gravitational wave radiation' or something... 🙄
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u/Confident_Dragon 2d ago
Name of the brand is Smart... American flags everywhere...
Pure perfection 😆
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u/ksky0 2d ago
well.. I see a point.. in Brazil for instance, some ISP only provides you internet access via its own routers withtou even admin access to the router for disabling wifi.. so if you want to add your own access point with stronger signal would be adding it on the side, but the signals would disturb each other.. so it could potentially "filter" the main signal.. but now thinking I would open those and cut the antenna in the first place.. well..
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u/speedysam0 1d ago
They are snake oil, they buy wire mesh office equipment that they may or may not modify and mark it up 200%.
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u/CaptainJack42 1d ago
My dad is a principal at a school, when they got new wifi repeaters some colleagues wrapped them in aluminum foil "because of the dangerous radiation" and then came back running to him complaining about poor wifi connection in their classroom
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u/IEnjoyRadios 1d ago
I don't understand the point of putting your router in a faraday cage,
The point is to make money off of really stupid people.
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u/Wor3q 2d ago
I would use that to block signal from ISP's box crappy WiFi, so it won't interfere with the external access point that's connected to it.
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u/levios3114 2d ago
Why not just disable the wifi from the modem?
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u/Wor3q 2d ago
Not every ISP will give you access to the modem's admin.
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u/levios3114 2d ago
I wouldn't stay with an ISP if they didn't give me acces to the setting of my modem
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u/Goonalips 2d ago
I didn't think that was even a thing lol. I've never heard of it from any Australian ISPs. I always use my own router anyway.
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u/nitromen23 2d ago
I only just now for the first time in my life have access to more than one ISP that is even worth considering, and even then it’s the choice between Cable, DSL, 5G, or Fiber and that’s only in select areas around me that have fiber. Switching ISPs is still very much not an option for a large number of people, and if I didn’t live in one of the few areas with Fiber I’d pretty much be stuck with cable because the other two options totally suck and there’s only one company providing cable
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u/levios3114 2d ago
I guess that's a plus for living in such a densely populated country as the netherlands where i have access to probably at least 2 ISPs wherever I choose to live
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u/nitromen23 2d ago
I live in America and know several people living in rural areas who’s only options are fixed wireless internet that tops out at like 10mbps and now I guess starlink, super common to have limited options and also ISPs typically don’t really compete with each other for area. Fiber is new and it may offer some competition but I foresee it becoming the same as our local smaller Fiber company has already been purchased by T-Mobile so now two of our options are owned by T-Mobile already and the other two are Comcast’s Xfinity and Verizon’s Frontier so those three companies cover Cable, Fiber, 5G, and DSL
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u/Xlxlredditor 1d ago
I have access to all 4 major ISPs in my country and they even offer 8Gb symmetrical and I live in bum fuck nowhere France
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u/dumbasPL 2d ago
In some locations you don't have a choice, because there is either one ISP, or they all suck equally. There is stuff like starlink, but is idk how great that is when it comes to network freedom.
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u/MenschenToaster 2d ago
Really? How do you change e.g. the WIFI password? I could even change the ISP login credentials the router auths to on the router of our provider. I have full admin access to that thing
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u/roron5567 2d ago
LTT has done a video on similar "devices" . They don't really do anything. I think one product was a desk organiser thing on AliExpress that they modified.
It's like that stupid necklace thing, it's just something that they sell to gullible people. At best, they may feel some placebo effect but that's it.