[drey08]

Has anyone here had issues with bluetooth interference from.. traffic lights?

My Sennheiser Momentum wireless headphones seem to be running into this issue. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does I notice it happens when the traffic lights switch (e.g green to red). There must be some kind of signal interfering with bluetooth that's emitted at that point, though I can't understand why since all traffic lights should be wired, to my knowledge.

For reference this is in Berlin, Germany. Perhaps it's something to do with the traffic tech they use in Germany.

[askvictor]

An increasing number of roads administrations use Bluetooth to track traffic movement. They can get a signature of a car at one intersection, and track that car as it moves through the city. I guess they look for any Bluetooth device in the area. Supposedly it's anonymized, but you never know. I know they do this in Sydney Australia, not certain where else.

[joshschreuder]

Interesting, I'm in Melbourne and at least once I got interference when I was crossing at an intersection. Maybe that's why.

[servercobra]

Yes! Every intersection in downtown Chicago I have this same issue with my Jabra Revo bluetooth headphones. I'm not sure if it involves the lights switching, but I always get audio cutting out very badly when I'm waiting to cross the street.

[phs318u]

And not just traffic lights. I'm in Melbourne, Australia and every day I walk across the concourse above Southern Cross station (major rail switching hub), and at a certain point my BT phones (also Jabra Revo) keep dropping out, then recover as I move past that black spot ("blue spot"?)

[rkangel]

Anything emitting in the 2.4 GHz spectrum has the potential to interfere with Bluetooth. Bluetooth is normally pretty robust to that as it channel hops quite fast so unless you are blatting the whole ISM band, you'll just lose a packet here and there which the system copes with fine.

Plenty of traffic light systems in the UK are wireless - saves digging up bits of road, you just need power. I don't know about Germany.

[mrb]

Actually, the majority of traffic lights being installed these days are controlled wirelessly.