An energy first as UK successfully transmits data via national electricity grid

In message , polygonum writes

More importantly:-) outside the terms of their existing wayleaves for either overhead or buried cables.

Must give the CLA a nudge! and join Harry in the consumer rip off bonanza.

On "hacking", the new system is digital. So it is as secure (or insecure) as the encryption and the design of the access points.

Also I somehow doubt it was using truck-sized resistors. Reactance, perhaps.

Doubt to your heart's content, you might be absolutely right, but my comment is based on the quoted article:

"To test the new technology, RT set up a handful of electrical devices - truck-sized resistors - across the UK to generate the messages and then installed 20 listening receivers in other places, connected only via the National Grid. When the messages were sent out, they were successfully received."

Yebbut...how can a resistor, truck-sized or otherwise "insert(s) the data as small changes in the 50Hz signal"? I suspect mis-reporting somewhere along the line.

causing a sequence of voltage drops, by switching it in and out of circuit, at a guess

I was expecting some sort of frequency modulation, but you may be right.

I don't know about 'across the grid' but mains-borne 'ripple control' was used for air raid warning and street light control during WWII.

Owain

on 11/10/2016, snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com supposed :

I didn't know that - have you a web site source for more information please?

Let me know how you get on as I argued this point and the DNO said that as they were not selling the bandwidth on the fibre strung along the top of our 132kV pylon was covered by the existing wayleave.

AJH

I agree. Most likely tiny amounts of phase modulation.

Data was being transmitted on the grid back in the 1970s. Eg, you could buy baby alarms which plugged into 13a sockets, data transmit ted through the house wiring

Later nuclear attack sirens were handled by something on the GPO side, IIRC.

The did try to switch streetlamps (dawn/dusk) using a single harmonic on top of the LV mains and a tuned relay in each lamppost sometime in the

And then of course many many radio frequencies, already polluted by powerline adaptors and badly designed swith mode psus would be totally unusable anywhere in the country. What a bummer. Brian

They wired it up with a Russ Andrew's cable?

Early implementations of ripple control occurred during World War II in various parts of the world using a system that communicates over the electrical distribution system.

New Scientist, 21 April 1983, page 170

The other resources I have, which describe the system in detail, are Newnes electrical books from the 1940s and 1950s.

Owain

Many years ago the London Science Museum had an exhibit of this. Bursts of audio tone were added on or off every second it seemed. A tuned circuit reacted to the audio by giving a swinging armature on a spring a kick at every burst. The swing rate was tuned to the burst rate, and when the armature had built up a sufficient amplitude of swing it operated a switch for the street light. I can't remember how the light was switched off.

Yes, I remember seeing that. It was a very oversized version of the actual relays in use, I believe. At about the same time, in the early

I've now found this interesting site that shows circuits and photos of the sort of thing I saw:

Chris Hogg formulated the question :

We had a two bar electric fire and when on, would reproduce the tones. That would have been around 1957, because I had initially convinced myself it was somehow picking up the Sputnik as it passed over.

We had gas street lighting in those days, so I would never see the electric lights come on.