PALATINE, Ill. — An elementary school science teacher in this Chicago suburb doesn’t have to turn on the news for an update on NASA’s space mission. She just turns on her video baby monitor.
Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.
“It’s not coming straight from the shuttle,” NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said. “People here think this is very interesting and you don’t hear of it often — if at all.”
Doug Phelps, a member of an amateur radio club in neighboring Schaumburg, has an explanation.
His organization, the Illinois chapter of the Motorola Amateur Radio Club, rebroadcasts NASA video as a public service. It is likely the monitor is picking up the video because amateur radio operates on the same frequency as baby monitors.
| Seems a little weird to me that baby monitors are on a ham frequency. |
Pretty soon, she’ll be getting the view screen on Battlestar Galactica or The Enterprise
I used to use a wireless intercom system for my 2 story home. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear 2 way conversations from my neighbors on their wireless phone, and at first not knowing where it was coming from was really creepy.
The NASA/Kids channel?
J/P=?
I’m going to guess that this is some sort of signal harmonics artifact they are experiencing.
RBG
weird
I am buying a baby monitor today!
The video monitor used in this story is made by a company that produces Part 15 (no license required) low power video transmitters for operation in the 902-928 Mhz and 2400-2483.5 Mhz Part 15 allocations. All Part 15 devices (at various frequencies) are shared with other licensed radio services. In this case, the unit is using a band that is shared with several other radio services, including Amateur Radio, automatic vehicle location systems, and other operations. An agreement with the FCC and NASA permits licensed Amateur Radio operators to retransmit NASA space shuttle communications on certain Amateur radio frequencies, including via ham radio ATV (amateur radio television) for educational purposes. You may have seen another recent story that garage door openers no longer work in the vicinity of various military bases in the U.S. This because the garage door openers are Part 15 devices allocated on frequencies used by the Dept of Defense. New DoD communication systems are interfering with those garage door systems. Hope that explanation helps!
#7, Ed, thanks for the info. For anyone interested, you can watch NASA TV in IE or Firefox (with easy plugin) here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060529.html
My computer speakers pick up CBs sometimes. do not know how that happens.
#6, OFTLO,
I am buying a baby monitor today!
Comment by OhForTheLoveOf — 6/15/2007 @ 11:14 am
Is there some news you are ready to share with us?