Data transmission down your house mains!

I thought this was pretty interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4080566.stm

I'm sure there are some fun applications for piggy-backing data onto your 110 or 240Volts AC!

DIY?

:thumb:

It's very common practice - power companies do this all the time. Here in denmark, power companies are entering the high-speed ISP market this way..

When I was a kid me and a friend built one of those mains modulator circuits where you could send control signals and audio across the house, as long as it was on the same phase. That was fun! We built a kind of remote "bug" into a mains plug.

There is way too much hash on the mains nowadays. And the amount of RF flying about...I'm sitting in the control room with 3 mobile phones and I can say "someones got a text coming in" :shock:

I tell people to switch them off when tracking :thumb:

Too many ingredients in the electromagnetic soup.

Mark

Same idea that the Train companies had a while back
Piggy backing data transmission onto the big electricity cables going up and down the country...
Saves on laying new cables

http://www.arrl.org/

Search their articles about BPL. There's a couple on their front page right now.

Further on down the page: an Armstrong commemorative broadcast from Alpine. I'm bummed that I missed that!

yeah BPL is the noose that's slowly tightening around the HF amateur bands.

Makes me glad I sold my HF radio two years ago, because I have a feeling prices will be bottoming out soon.

MA Bell has wire strung too.

Yes, hence DSL--which works great if you're close enough to the CO to take advantage of it.

Houses from the fifties used to have intercomms when mom was busy squirtin ten kids and watching the washer overflow.

"This is Pops callin, bring me some more vodka, biatch!" :shock:

It was modulated on the house wiring and never worked for long.

A family relative is a big shot with a power company. They investigated this but declined..... supposedly the technology wasn't going to be developed any further............... maybe this has changed. Supposedly the phone line technology leapfrogged it..... and kept developing.

Russian friends tell me that in the cold-war era Soviet Union, the official state radio was brought into every building by means of the AC power distribution system. All comrades were required by law to always have it ON; in fact, there was no OFF button!

Yep... one enormous (and un-jammable) "intercom" piped into every workplace, restaurant, shop, and living room.
Hush up... Big Brother is talking!

Funny thing is... typical Americans nearly do the same thing with our constantly ON television, the difference being it is Madison Avenue creating in us the "perfect consumer" :roll:
At least, though, my OFF button works. :wink:

That technology has been used for years for local-area AM broadcasts on college campuses, etc. Do a search on "carrier-current broadcasting."

[quote author="rlantis"]Russian friends tell me that in the cold-war era Soviet Union, the official state radio was brought into every building by means of the AC power distribution system. All comrades were required by law to always have it ON; in fact, there was no OFF button!

[/quote]

It was 30v AC line and had three channels. All older buildings had it. To have it always on by law is... little bit exaggerated. With a volume control you could bring it to '0', or just simply... unplug. The more advanced models of receivers had off position.