Did you hear the one about the smartphone that turned the Maytag oven on high and could have burned down the apartment building? This happened in New York City, not far from me so it was on the local news, last month. The speculation is that the EMI from the man's cell phone induced voltages in the oven's keypad and voila! the oven turned itself on, and set itself to 'high' no less. If you'd like to see it in action, check out the video at the NY Times. Apparently, it's a problem unique to this particular type of Maytag oven, so it is rare. (For the record, I love Maytag appliances.) The really bad news here was that the apartment owner pretty much used his oven as a cabinet rather than a cooking device…yikes.

Anyway, this problem was a new one to me, and made me think about all the conversations I've had with engineers and designers over the years about keeping EMI low, and how important (shall we say life threatening?) it could really be. Perhaps some brushing up on the fundamentals might be in order? If you are with me on that, you might want to check out the EMI Fundamentals course at Applied Technology Institute or slide on over to the National Semiconductor website for a quick 19 minute online seminar. If you want to go straight for mitigation professionals, maybe you can try someone like Rhein Tech Laboratories.

In the meantime, if you have some good EMI reduction tips/tricks or a technical article on the topic, please post it on TechBites and let us know in the User Reviews section below.

Meantime, I just got a call so I'm going to go check on my oven. It's a Maytag, you know…