Spammers, it's Napier again. Are you ready for the tech mystery of the century? It involves cats, a piano, and a wireless charger.
So I have two cats, both of whom regularly eat different foods. For this, I've been testing a pair of fancypants pet feeders which scan my cats' embedded microchips. This is basically an RFID tag to find them should they get lost, not some weird bionic animal experiment.
Here's the mystery: the pet feeder stopped working properly all of a sudden. It would not recognize my cats consistently. This was frustrating, as it meant I was being woken up at 5 in the morning for food.
Tech goes bad all the time, but I felt something else was afoot. And then I thought of the one thing that had changed recently: I started using a wireless charger, which I placed a few feet away from the pet feeders.
Lo and behold: if I placed my phone on the charger, the feeders would not work. If I took it off, it worked perfectly. Somehow, the wireless charging process was scrambling the RFID signal.
And lest you think this was all a fluke, it wasn't the first time I'd experienced such wireless charging tragedy. A few years ago, my digital piano wasn't working correctly, randomly sending MIDI signals to my PC.
Just as I was about to send it back to Casio, I realized that the piano worked fine when I moved it away from my computer. Once again, a wireless charging pad on my desk was the culprit.
So there you have it folks. Don't wireless charge around your cats. Or your pianos.
