Ring Of Fire? Man's Cell Phone Turns On His Oven (Sony Ericsson PDA)

Ring Of Fire? Man's Cell Phone Turns On His Oven

It's amazing, it's peculiar, and it's dangerous. So says a Brooklyn man who's experiencing some weird occurrences with his cell phone and his stove.

Andre's cell phone starts his Maytag oven whenever someone calls and the phone is sitting nearby.

CBS 2 watched the bizarre phenomenon happen.

These days it seems like cell phones or smart phones can do just about anything. Just ask Andrei Melnikov, whose smart phone apparently has an unintended "app" unlike any other.

That's because when Melnikov's Sony Ericsson PDA is near the stove in his kitchen and happens to light up with a call, his Maytag Magic Chef oven lights up to a broil.

"The over turns on by itself," he told CBS 2. "If I want to bake some pie, I just put the pie inside and ask a friend to give me a call. That's all I have to do."

He said he noticed it last week when the cell phone was just a couple feet from the stove. It rang, and the stove began to beep, indicating the broiler was on high. Gas flames came on from the burners, torching his meat thermometer that was inside the oven.

"I see the flames and the smoke coming from here. I was shocked the first time," he said.

Melnikov said this whole thing is beyond dangerous and that he and his wife can't sleep, fearing that another incident might happen again."

"It could be a fire. If I leave the house and didn't smell the smoke it could be dangerous," he said.

The company sent a repairman to his home on Monday, but he couldn't explain why it was happening. So he ordered a suppressor for the stove in hopes of fixing the problem. That order, however, could take one to two weeks before it arrives.

For now, Melnikov will keep the stove unplugged and his cell phone far away.

A spokesman for the Whirlpool Corporation, which owns Maytag, told CBS 2 they just learned of the problem Monday morning and are looking into it with their customer service team.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Sony
• Ericsson
• PDA
• Maytag
• oven
• Whirlpool
• Corporation
• amazing
• peculiar
• dangerous.

[tnekkc]

I have made a living fixing this kind of thing.

It is called electromagnetic interference [EMI]

There was once an airport with lots of problems traced to a cash register 2 miles away.

The best example is your mom's mixer wrecking the TV reception on your rabbit ear antenna.

[crazyAlexander23]

cool

[MrCarolinaMuzik]

@TehMG yea agreed, but some after affects are just that. "after"

[truegamer4ever]

Haha that's crazy man, I only wonder how it got synced like that.

[rawsdawg]

crazzzy shit

[TehMG]

The problem: shitty consumer electronics.

A "simple" device such as an oven control board should not be affected by a few milliwatts of RF like that.

Heck I used to have a programmable thermostat that would sometimes reset itself just by walking beside it, due to the static charge from your body!

It all comes down to poor design and testing.

[hatchbw]

Many appliance manufacturers to not test electronic controls for the effect of INCOMING signals. Usualy they test controls for OUTGOING signals. Lack of a universal appliance testing standard is the real root cause. Appliance manufacurers will not allocate resources to address issues related to incoming RF (Radio Frequency) interference without government regulation. As the instance of such issues is rare and often improperly classified, regultion and resource allocation is unlikely

[nmcarpenter]

lol, "...that him and his wife can't sleep, fearing something like this might happen again." Or you could just move back to Soviet Russia and wait for your car to blow up. I'm thinking just keeping the cell phone away from the oven is gonna take care of the problem, nothing to lose sleep oven...I mean over! lol

[number13lucky]

hahaha nice

[NIKUMentzoni]

Cool

[WilliQ7]

ha ha