Wireless Mouse Interference Issue

[jb2006]

I have a quick question for you about wireless mice/keyboards. We recently purchased another wireless router for my office and have since not been able to use any of our wireless mice or keyboards. We have changed all batteries and tried different brands and nothing has worked. Even brand-new out of the box only work for a day or two before they stop working. The only way we can get them to work is by moving them to 1-2 feet away from the receiver.

I was told that our microwave might be interfering but we never use it. Let me know if you can think of anything to remedy this – thx!

[thuor]

Sorry to hear about your problems. Definitely seems like RF interference.

So just to clarify to get the kb’s & mice working you have to move them away from the wireless router or away from their own receivers?

Usually wireless routers seldom cause interference to other devices – it’s usually the other way round. The simple reason is that it was designed to prevent this. The technical reason for this is that the 802.11b/g protocol that WiFi is based on uses direct sequence spread spectrum transmission at very low power, the power is adaptive and the subchannels are narrow. However, it’s not impossible to see this. Some questions:

1)Do the mice work in the 2.4GHz spectrum – if not then this is definitely not the problem. Some mice at 27MHz, 900MHz etc
2)If so, when you turn off the wireless radio in the router (or simple power them off) do the mice work? This is the surest test to see if the router is interfering
3)If the mice work with the router off then one thing you can do is change the wireless channel the routers are working on. In any case this is something you would want to do anyway to minimize co-channel and/or adjacent-channel interference with other WiFi routers in close proximity (which gives you speed). In the U.S WiFi has 3 non-overlapping subchannels: channel 1, 6 and 11.
4)Could the mice be interfering with each other? This is more likely if you are not seeing instantaneous issue but rather a delayed ceasing of operation. This would suggest some frequency drift (poor design). When you re-pair them do they start working? Usually will if this is the issue.

It’s interesting that you mention the microwave oven. This is a common misconception that i have actually seen very often with people blaming the poor microwave oven for all their RF woes. True the magnetron in the microwave oven generates radiation in the 2.4GHz band but all microwave ovens enclosures are actually what’s called a Faraday cage to keep radiation in (that conductive mesh you see has openings of diameter much less than the wavelength of a 2.4G electromagnetic wave). So only the very old or poorly built microwaves will cause RF interference (and if they did this would be dangerous since the radiated energy might be well above FCC human body exposure limits). Some RF energy does leak out but it very low power.