Agreed. I'm just trying to consider all options here to address the comments in this thread.
Just wanted to point out there are things can freak a dog out - like unexpected clicks. And of course, high frequency sounds emitted by bad LED lighting will impact their mental health.
The click, I get. I guess I never really thought about the high-frequency sounds emitted by LEDs, but that is a valid point. I guess that makes me wonder is stuff like Zwave and Zigbee actually do emit a sound on some frequency?
Iām going to guess it may be LEDs. My dog seems absolutely fine, no issues after many years of use, she is quite healthy. Every LED in this house is either a Phillips Hue or brand that I got off Amazon that I couldnāt detect any sound from. Iām the one thatās very sensitive to high frequencies and I can hear them where other people canāt. We used to have some Sylvania bulbs that I gave to my daughter. I couldnāt stand them, and nobody else could hear the sound from them. Eventually, she put them in a light in the closet and the particular shape of the fixture and the enclosed space allowed her to hear what I was hearing. She didnāt want to use them anywhere else and she couldnāt stand the sound either, so she recycled them.
The only other device Iāve had where I heard a sound from it was a Homeseer HS-FS100. When I used an underpowered supply to run it, it made a very noticeable, high-pitched frequency that even my wife could hear. But when I put a higher amperage supply on it, it still made a sound that I could hear, but nobody else could hear it.
No. Although a zigbee LED bulb or a z-wave LED bulb can.
The frequency that zigbee and Z-wave run at is way above what mammals can hear.
I'm not sure I buy it... I mean dogs everywhere would have been showing these symptoms years ago and it would have been noticed. My GSD which basically has radar dishes for ears would have been howling day in and day out.
What symptoms?
What are we even talking about?
I tend to agree. With the shear number of dogs that have come through our house since 2017 (also about the same time I started down this rabbit hole), I would think we would have seen a more concrete example. I can't use the one dog as an example, everything set her off. None of the other dogs or our own have shown any sort of issues that I've noticed.
If anyone has seen any signs of their smart stuff making their dogs sick. When I get a chance to see and read the article that brought all this up ill post it here .. should be later this afternoon or evening.
Sorry that was my point. Sick how? āSickā could mean anything.
I would guess behavioral or itchy/scratchy. or as a few have alluded to, people projecting on their pets because they cant figure out anything solid.
My wife thought I was the crazy one when I told her I could hear the colon flash on the clock on the microwave display. Without looking I tapped in sync with it. It's kind of a quiet buzzing. That said, I can hear the "teen buzz" (remember that?) but she can't. I'm sure our pets hear SO much more.
Dogs, cats, and rodents have a range of hearing that enable them to hear sounds far to high in audio frequency for the human ear to hear. A child might be able to hear sounds up to 22 kHz. As we age, most adults lose the upper frequency range of hearing. I have difficulty with anything above 10kHz. Fortunately, speech and most of the sounds to which we are exposed daily are well below that frequency. Although the lower limit of human hearing is around 20 Hz, once the frequency drops below 50 Hz, we might feel the frequency more than hearing it.
Depending upon your location, most electrical systems operate at 50-60 Hz alternating current. Sometimes this electromagnetic variation can set up an audible variation perceived as a hum. In fluorescent, LED, and LCD lighting systems, the electrical signal can sometimes produce a visible flicker to which some individuals and some animals can be sensitive.
Smart Home devices operate on radio frequencies which are electromagnetic signals rather than audio signals. Although radio frequencies can go down as low as 3 Hz in the ELF (extremely low frequency) band, at such low frequencies, data transmission is extremely slow. To transmit data fast enough to be useful for smart home control, the devices operate in the UHF (ultra high frequency) range of 300- 3000 mega Hertz range or the SHF (super high frequency ) range of 3000 - 30,000 mHz. The later range is generally expressed as 3 gHz to 30 gHz.
Lutron Clear Connect operates at 434 mHz which is in the lower end of the UHF range. Z-wave device frequency varies by country but falls in the middle of the UHF range at 850 - 950 mHz. In the USA, the frequency is 908.42 mHz. Although the Zigbee protocol does provide for use of 868 mHz and 902-928 mHz. However, most home automation Zigbee devices operate in the same 2.4 gHz frequency range also used by WiFi and Bluetooth devices.
It is possible for electromagnetic radiation to impact humans and pets. However, the impact depends upon the frequency of the radiation, the proximity to the transmitter of that radiation, the power output of the radiation transmitter, and the duration of exposure over time. Since home automation devices are often battery powered, they are designed for low power consumption and limited duration of transmission, which reduces exposure time. I would not suggest placing the Hubitat hub on top of your head, but it is designed to operate using 5 volts at 1 amps while that is a total of 5 watts, that includes power consumed by the CPU chip and memory. The transmission power will be much lower. A microwave oven in your kitchen typically operates at 2.48 gHz, but it has a power output of 1000-1200 watts, more than 200 times the radiation from your Hubitat, but the microwave cavity is designed to minimize leakage of radiation. A powerful commercial radio station might output 100,000 watts of effective radiated power and the most powerful television stations might output 1 million watts effective radiated power. Thus, if you live close to a radio or television transmitter, you will be exposed to far more radiation from that source than anything in your home.
I absolutely hate these type of articles. Some journalist reads part of some technical publication and writes a "scare" piece with no technical references at all. Then somebodies spouse reads it and in their interpretation ".... the experts say...". And it does downhill from there.
Our dog died at age 16 after 8 years in smart home. Proof right there.
Since going "smart home", if it ain't all working just so my wife tends to get "not tonight" type headaches.
But nobody wants to talk about living with the darker side of home automations.
Ok. Finally read it. @danabw is the closest. Though I will add I called it, cheap zigbee devices. Definitely calling b.s. On this one. Also, the free app they reccomeded is just a decibel meter app.
Good call.
Download the Hubitat app
