This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced...
So folks, don't forget to check if your Ikea chair is compatible with your screen. I'm not kidding. A thread 🧵.
I've had the problem with my new screen for several weeks now, that every now and then the screen goes black for a few seconds.
Today I had enough and wanted to investigate the problem. So I started changing all the cables, plugging the screen into a different socket, and and and. Nothing helped.
…
The only correlation I could find was that the screen only goes off when my Ikea office chair is somehow involved.
…
It turns out that the fabric seat cover, and/or the gas suspension creates such a strong electrostatic discharge (ESD) that my screen shuts off for a short time.
This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced lightdm crash.
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere. I'm having the...
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere.
I'm having the weirdest and most specific sense of deja vu right now.
Your memory is correct. And the post is even linked in the Mastodon thread: https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/hauptmonitor-wird-sporadisch-kurz-schwarz.2060771/
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it. Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor,...
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it.
Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor, and did monitor when that post was new. And the post did get quite popular. Unexpectedly, I found it basically instantly once I bothered to search.
And because DeepL had a hell of a hard time translating that (articles, prepositions, that kinda stuff), here's a revised translation. I hope DeepL stored all the corrections I made as training data. Emphasis mine.
Small anecdote to give you something to smile about, marvel at, and save you headaches:
Last week I noticed again how my screen would randomly go into standby, lose signal, or turn off altogether. It got to the point where I was able to replace it (Amazon Prime). The problem persisted and I vehemently tried to isolate the source of the error:
Windows 11 is currently still quite error-prone as far as the Radeon drivers were concerned and the latest driver didn't help. So the OS was unceremoniously wiped out and 10 was installed. Long story short: No improvement.
I changed the cables between client and display because I suspected a loose contact. Or a bad shielding. No improvement.
In the meantime, I even replaced the desk, because I had to buy a new one anyway due to relocation. You can guess: no improvement.
I was about to doubt my sanity when I noticed that the monitor always had problems or switched off when I got up from the desk. Some sort of AFK feature like on some laptops doesn't exist natively on Windows 10, and without a webcam or the like, how could the system know I was moving away from my desk anyway?
The phenomenon can be found here and there with a handful of people on the internet and at some point I came across a paper somewhere that showed causality between the gas lifts in office chairs and a brief electromagnetic pulse. And lo and behold: The standing up and unloading of the gas lift in my chair in combination with the static between the cover and my pants (friction when standing up) discharged a short electromagnetic impulse, which interrupts the signal of the monitor. The monitor then either switched to standby or looked for another source.
Long story short: Ferrite cores on the display port cable or a cotton towel on the chair help out. Greetings from Absurdistan!
You may enjoy these! They're the ones that come to mind for me along with the Magic switch one. The Best Debugging Story I've Ever Heard The case of the 500-mile email
I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this.
You may enjoy these! They're the ones that come to mind for me along with the Magic switch one.
The story of how a helium leak (from an MRI being installed) temporarily bricked a bunch of Apple devices everywhere in a hospital is a great one as well
I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this.
This is still a problem with fabric covered chairs even those from higher end stores then IKEA. My monitors still flicker and occasionally turn off when my chair from secret Lab gets just a little...
This is still a problem with fabric covered chairs even those from higher end stores then IKEA. My monitors still flicker and occasionally turn off when my chair from secret Lab gets just a little too close while I'm working
Was zum fick!? A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!
Was zum fick!?
A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!
Turning on a fluorescent lamp in my girlfriend's kitchen used to make her TV cut out. It turned out it was the HDMI signal rather than the TV - presumably the EM pulse was enough to disturb the...
Turning on a fluorescent lamp in my girlfriend's kitchen used to make her TV cut out. It turned out it was the HDMI signal rather than the TV - presumably the EM pulse was enough to disturb the HDMI signals for long enough that the picture couldn't be decoded.
An electro-static discharge is effectively a broad band RF transmission (see spark gap transmitters) - so it's not surprising that it would interfere with a sensitive high bandwidth communication link. It's more surprising that the monitor would go into standby or restart, rather than just losing sync on the HDMI signal.
I have been having the exact same problem at work and I'm trying different ways of fixing it... My screen would go black whenever someone stood up. Ferrite suppressors have been my latest (and...
I have been having the exact same problem at work and I'm trying different ways of fixing it... My screen would go black whenever someone stood up. Ferrite suppressors have been my latest (and most successful) bet to date
This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced lightdm crash.
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere.
I'm having the weirdest and most specific sense of deja vu right now.
Your memory is correct. And the post is even linked in the Mastodon thread:
https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/hauptmonitor-wird-sporadisch-kurz-schwarz.2060771/
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it.
Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor, and did monitor when that post was new. And the post did get quite popular. Unexpectedly, I found it basically instantly once I bothered to search.
And because DeepL had a hell of a hard time translating that (articles, prepositions, that kinda stuff), here's a revised translation. I hope DeepL stored all the corrections I made as training data. Emphasis mine.
You may enjoy these! They're the ones that come to mind for me along with the Magic switch one.
The Best Debugging Story I've Ever Heard
The case of the 500-mile email
The story of how a helium leak (from an MRI being installed) temporarily bricked a bunch of Apple devices everywhere in a hospital is a great one as well
This is still a problem with fabric covered chairs even those from higher end stores then IKEA. My monitors still flicker and occasionally turn off when my chair from secret Lab gets just a little too close while I'm working
Was zum fick!?
A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!
Turning on a fluorescent lamp in my girlfriend's kitchen used to make her TV cut out. It turned out it was the HDMI signal rather than the TV - presumably the EM pulse was enough to disturb the HDMI signals for long enough that the picture couldn't be decoded.
An electro-static discharge is effectively a broad band RF transmission (see spark gap transmitters) - so it's not surprising that it would interfere with a sensitive high bandwidth communication link. It's more surprising that the monitor would go into standby or restart, rather than just losing sync on the HDMI signal.
I have been having the exact same problem at work and I'm trying different ways of fixing it... My screen would go black whenever someone stood up. Ferrite suppressors have been my latest (and most successful) bet to date