Let us help you identify that mysterious object you’ve found.
Currently in CHALLENGE mode: If you've got something obscure knocking about, post a picture, and let's see how we do. Please prefix such posts with "CHALLENGE:" so we know we've got a fighting chance.
Just curious what this is? Spotted in suburban northeast US. Didn’t see anything wlse like it around but maybe I just missed them.
We have similar kinda of boxes in Australia, usually they are monitoring stations for the energy infrastructure provider. Can be cellular or long range radio links.
Yep, we have smart water and electric meters. I'm pretty sure these are for communicating with each house's meter and gathering usage data.
Oh, that’s interesting. I never thought about the meters communicating on their own network.
My smart electric meter has a zigbee symbol on it. It's likely a locked down encrypted proprietary network, but it's there. I spoke to the installer and he didn't know what it was but did say they were on their own network. Mesh makes sense too. You can have one of these pick up a neighborhood, and each house connects to all the rest. Can even be flaky, they just need it to connect once per billing cycle.
A lot of those are not encrypted and can be read with a cheap sdr dongle.
Mine is. I have one and tried. I can't even see it. I also have a similar looking antenna at the end of my street.
I have a smart meter that allows grid controllers to remotely charge and discharge my battery to smooth out high demand peaks (I earn money from it) but I haven't been able to record a coherent bitstream from it with my SDR yet. I assume it's encrypted and/or proprietary data.
From what im told, the transmitters lie dormant most of the time (at least for gas). Only when they receive a signal do they send a signal, except when they are activated by a technician. When activated, they broadcast a signal to reach either another device on the network, or a reciever like the one in op's pic.
LoRa is getting pretty popular in that space too. So could just be a repeater.
Could be a couple of things bundled together. Looks similar to gunshot detection system minus the “icicle” part.
Some cities network their traffic-lights with similar-looking point-to-point radio-data links.
I doubt it’s that specifically given the town—very few traffic lights—but that would align with other suggestions about water/power meter communications. I’m sure municipal radio-data relays are probably all going to look the same regardless of what’s networked.
Very few traffic lights is a very good reason to do them wireless though.
I see what you mean, but in this case I see it more as them being too far away to benefit from being linked or coordinated. Not a lot of need for smart traffic flow management—but maybe I’m just underesting the local transportation department.