Anti-WiFi Wallpaper Available Next Year 167
hypnosec writes with good news for folks who want to live in a Faraday cage. From the article: "A new type of wallpaper, which has been developed by scientists from the Institut Polytechnique Grenoble INP and the Centre Technique du Papier, will go on sale in 2013 after a Finnish firm Ahlstrom acquired the license. What looks like a bog-standard wallpaper roll actually contains silver particles that allows it to filter out up to three different frequencies simultaneously. It is not the first time that such a technology has surfaced. Back in 2004, BAE Systems was tasked by Ofcom to come up with a similar solution based on what was then called a stealth wallpaper. It used copper instead of silver and blocked Wi-Fi signals while letting GSM, 4G and emergency calls through. Back then, though, a square meter cost £500, whereas the Wi-Fi wallpaper devised by the French researchers should be priced reasonably, with costs matching those of a 'classic,' mid-range wallpaper according to M. Lemaître-Auger, from Grenoble INP."
it probably could be done also with paint (Score:4, Insightful)
Americans do not use wallpaper much.
Re:it probably could be done also with paint (Score:4, Funny)
Americans do not use wallpaper much.
But if they would just use tin foil instead of silver (really, how bourgeois) it would be a major hit.
At least here on Slashdot. Maybe ThinkGeek could sell it.
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In the US, you usually buy colored paint by choosing the color from a display of color cards and an operator taps in the code to machine which squirts the right ratio of dyes into a white base paint. Another machine then vibrates the can to mix it, while you get on with the rest of your shopping.
It wouldn't be hard to add a squirter of said silver particles to the machine. Pay a premium for a squirt of wifi blocker. Of course they couldn't patent this, because I just said it.
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I'd line the walls that face my street with foil if it didn't look so tacky and I could find EMF-proof curtains for the windows. Every time a car drives by I lose my TV signal (Shitty RCA tuner).
But wifi? Why paper your walls when you can just use encryption?
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To keep other Wifi signals out. It's a crowded spectrum.
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Exactly. In my condo (looking now), I can see 16 SSID's just in the quick-connect. I'm sure if I turned up a proper monitor for a minute I'd see at least half-again that number. And of course, nobody knows or cares how to spread the things out , so it's an ongoing battle.
I'd like a paint that blocks wifi, and some plain, less-expensive version of the same for the floor under the carpet.
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Another layer of protection.
Security is all about adding layers of protection at reasonable costs.
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Re:it probably could be done also with paint (Score:4, Informative)
what you really need is two layers the outside layer an antenna to pick up the neighbours wifi and this on the inside to keep them from picking up yours.
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"But if they would just use tin foil instead of silver (really, how bourgeois) it would be a major hit."
Foil-backed wallpaper has been available for decades at least. And it probably would indeed make a good Faraday cage, as long as you grounded it and your doors were metal too.
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Hope the paint is expensive... poor people in the hood generally run open WiFi!! :D
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I chuckled when they commented that it would "be priced at a modest premium vs classic mid-range wallpaper". Actual decorator mid-range wallpaper (nothing like the shit you will find at big box stores) is anywhere from $2 to $25 per *square foot*. That means a tiny 10x10 room can be anywhere from $640 to $8,000 to do the whole thing. This is why Americans generally eschew wallpaper (at least full-room designs) in favor of a nice coat of paint (about $50 for the whole room and you might have some left ov
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Which is significantly cheaper than the $80 per square foot it is being compared with.
Lead paint (Score:3)
How about lead paint? My apartment is covered in the stuff!
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That is true if you don't want to use your cell phone either. The pattern is designed to filter frequencies used by WiFi but not those used by cell phones. You can not do that with paint.
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Well I wish they'd paint movie theatres in non-selective paint.
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But what about if there is an accident in the theater and no one can call 911; panic will ensue. I can't phone friends to tell them how bad the movie is it is censorship and agains my right to freedom of speech.Sounds kind of dumb doesn't it but this is the logic used by many to blast BART for shutting off cellular coverage [slashdot.org] in response to a planned protest.
Re:it probably could be done also with paint (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, the chances of an emergency requiring radio or cellphone on BART are far higher than in a movie theatre. And there are plenty more non-emergency but reasonable needs for communication whilst travelling.
For sure it's not many years since no one had any cellphones anyway, so it's far from disaster if people lose it for a while. But I think it's an over-reaction to take the service down because of a protest. Protests are an intrinsic part of being in a democracy and shouldn't be thought of as something to be suppressed.
The significant difference between the two is that when a movie ticket is bought, there is an implicit contract that you're not going to disturb other patrons by using cellphones. If you're unwilling to forgo them, then you shouldn't be buying a ticket.
But you don't reasonably forgo the expectation to use a cellphone when you travel on BART. Now it's part of the facilities it shouldn't be taken away without good reason. And I don't think a protest in the area is a good reason.
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That's why I prefer low powered jamming tied to the house lights for theaters, etc.
you generally only need one strong enough to drop out the signal strength.
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And there are plenty more non-emergency but reasonable needs for communication whilst travelling.
People seemed to get along fine before cell phones were invented and traveling. Cell phones are a convenience and not a right.
Protests are an intrinsic part of being in a democracy and shouldn't be thought of as something to be suppressed.
There are plenty of other venues to protest rater than a crowded platform with trains moving by. How about the the court house that convicted the officer of involuntary manslaughter? The protest was planned only because some people didn't think that involuntary manslaughter was a stiff enough conviction.
The idea that people should be able to protest anywhere any time is not reasonabl
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I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
The protesters did not apply for or get a permit for this protest and it is therefore an unlawful protest.
There's a big problem with the concept of protests being illegal unless sanctioned by government. Ref China, Russia, Syria etc.
For sure you personally might find the US government within some acceptable bounds right now, so it's reasonable to give them the right of veto over protest. But what about people who differ in that opinion? Is their opinion less important than yours? And what if in a few years time the US government
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BART did not cut off all protest just protest in that one type of area.
There's a big problem with the concept of protests being illegal unless sanctioned by government. Ref China, Russia, Syria etc.
There are a very strict list of reasons that a permit can be denied and "we don't agree with you" is not on that list. The government is required to do anything reasonable to allow protests to go forward. This is very different from the countries you list because they deny protests because they do not like what the protesters have to say.
And what if in a few years time the US government is not one that you trust anymore, and they are suppressing your protest?
Any denied permit can go to court to get a ruling. If the government and the courts turn against the
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Yet another person who never read about how BART
I never read about it at all. It's a local rail system in the US and I'm not American. We're only discussing it at all because you brought it up in a reply to one of my posts. I'm only going from what you said. I don't really care enough to check the details myself.
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If you don't care enough to verify facts then don't make statements like "that's even more reason not to cut off the emergency communication lines." So, since you do not care enough to check facts, you are admitting that your statements are un-researched assumptions on you part that may or may not be true. I will keep that in mind when reading your posts.
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Stupid cunt.
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That would assume that it was a Faraday cage. That is a reasonable assumption as that is the standard way of blocking radio waves. According to one of the articles it is a diffraction grid that can be tuned to the frequencies that it will absorb and filter.
indeed it is frequency-specific (Score:2)
If you look at the article photos, you'll see the filtering is by means of a printed conductive ink in patterns that are quite complex, visibly featuring capacitors at specific frequencies etc.
To me it is obvious this is not a simple Faraday cage but a frequency-specific damper.
So there is nothing lile "if a GSM fits the hole then..."
If the damper is well designed it'll kill a specific Wifi frequency, and it alone.
could this decrease interference in high-rises? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I put some of this wallpaper on the walls between me and neighbors in an apartment building (and maybe even something similar on floors/ceilings), could this plausibly increase signal quality by reducing interference from the 50 (!) other access points I currently see within range?
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Yes.
Re:could this decrease interference in high-rises? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's kind of the entire point.
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From the article it sounds like they were advertising it as a way to keep your signals from getting out, as a kind of physical security barrier--- not as a way of keeping others' signals from coming in. But perhaps it's true that they'll end up marketing it that way as well.
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it is a shame that the windows will have to be covered also.
I have aluminum siding on much of my house. I am going to ground it when I get home to see if my neighbors routers suddenly stop showing up.
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Some probably will, but I expect your siding is already well grounded.
I had aluminum siding on my old house, it was grounded in several spots (plumbing for garden hose spigots, electrical inlet and meter, AC unit, grounding spike, probably at a few other points too), and phones, pagers, etc did not work well inside. It was kinda nice most of the time. My wireless was very low strength, but usable, on the front porch in front of the picture window, and as expected very strong inside.
Phil
Re:could this decrease interference in high-rises? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:could this decrease interference in high-rises? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Goodbye tin foil hat; hello stylish wallpaper hat."
Hello band-pass filter wallpaper hat!
Now I can SORT the voices in my head.
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Re:could this decrease interference in high-rises? (Score:4, Funny)
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Talk to your local RF/microwave EE about waveguides and cutoff freqs and operating way the heck above cutoff. You won't like what you'll hear.
I almost guarantee you'll be constructing an efficient waveguide system in the lower VHF region, maybe UHF in hallways, depends on design. My open plan bachelor pad probably would have made a decent 20 meter ham band waveguide, but my little dorm room in college would have been more like 6M waveguide. Anyway this is probably going to increase noise levels. Even wo
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Since probably most people here have no idea what multimode is:
Think echoes or reverberation, but for radio waves.
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Back in the analog TV days we called multimode interference "ghosting." It's a lot worse with digital, rather than two of something on the screen you don't get a picture at all (I have multimode interference whenever a car drives by my house).
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What? That doesn't make any sense, unless things are JUST right and you're getting a reflection from the car.
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I figure either reflections, or more likely interference from spark plugs, since even a motorcycle will kill the picture and sound for a second. Perhaps both. Mostly, though, I think it's my shitty tuner.
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OK... a waveguide is exactly like a single mode optical fiber, but for much lower frequencies. If the waveguide is too small for the wave you wanna shove into it, it doesn't fit (cutoff). Look into your microwave oven... the microwaves don't stay inside because of the glass, but because they can't fit thru the holes in the screen door inside the glass.
Pitiful analogy is its like walking around in a funhouse full of mirrors while expecting wall power to radiate out of a power cord like a laser into the lap
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In other words: a conductive shield is a solution with serious side effects. An absorbing (dissipative) wallpaper would be much better. Perhaps a little bit of bulk conductivity but not too much would do the trick? No, this [davidkiyokawa.com] isn't what I had in mind, why, thank you.
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Filling your walls with BBQ charcoal and grounding it would probably work "OK", or at least better than nothing.
At microwave-range freqs finding a good absorber is no picnic as they tend to be annoyingly freq dependent. I had one piece of comm gear operating around 3 GHz that insisted on oscillating whenever I placed the cover on the enclosure... I tried all the usual conductive foams on the cover and it just wouldn't work. I ended up repackaging the amplifiers into smaller enclosures inside the main syst
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On the other hand, all that interference will presumably make it even better when your objective is to stop people using wireless devices in the shielded room. Like for example discouraging device use in a movie theatre.
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If I put some of this wallpaper on the walls between me and neighbors in an apartment building (and maybe even something similar on floors/ceilings), could this plausibly increase signal quality by reducing interference from the 50 (!) other access points I currently see within range?
It will also improve your own network by limiting interference between the APs you have in each room.
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Bah! Just modify the firmware on your access point to boost the transmit power and drown out all the other APs! If you do it right, you won't be able to see any other APs. And you may even be able to warm food on it, to boot. :)
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Bah! Just modify the firmware on your access point to boost the transmit power and drown out all the other APs! If you do it right, you won't be able to see any other APs. And you may even be able to warm food on it, to boot. :)
Alas, the neighbors have already done that trick. Now I get Moire patterns on my retinas whenever I enter the kitchen.
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EM-blocking wallpaper would also block radio and TV reception. Or maybe just the UHF band. (Then again maybe I'm the only one who still uses that old technology, and most people don't care.)
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It sounds like this one is frequency-specific, so it would only block wifi frequencies. But I suppose it depends on just how narrow the blocked band is.
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Powerline Adapters in Apt Building? (Score:2)
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Maybe, maybe not. The signals will still come through windows, through unpapered areas behind cabinets and shower stalls, etc... Even on papered walls, there's going to be leakage through light switches and electric plugs (especially if you have plastic boxes).
Mistranslation in summary (Score:2)
no greater evil than wallpaper (Score:5, Informative)
being from europe my mom made my dad put it up on the walls. if you want to change it you have a hellish experience ahead of removing the old wallpaper
i will never use wall paper
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Clearly you're not a redneck.
I've helped tear out a wall that had at least 20 layers of wallpaper on it...
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Real rednecks re-use wallpaper as mountain money.
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No real rednecks use it as a prom dress then peel off a layer and use it as a wedding dress...
Re:no greater evil than wallpaper (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree. Imagine what fun it was to attempt to pull 30 year old straw wallpaper. It was a mat of ~1/32" diameter straw with a fine thread woven into it every few inches, to keep the straws aligned. They obviously did a good job of installing it -- the glue held very well, and somehow didn't think much of being soaked in water for hours. After suffering through removal of perhaps 50ft^2 of it, we decided enough was enough. It was easier to replace the drywall in the room. Hey -- the walls look new, and it wa
how about passive cell-phone-blocking tech? (Score:3, Interesting)
Churches and theaters would love it, because the FCC can't say "you can't do that" without a serious court challenge.
They still wouldn't do it probably (Score:2)
Because of lawsuits. So person goes to theatre, it blocks cell signals. they have a heart attack, try to dial 911, it doesn't go through, they die. Now arguments aside as to if that would have saved his life, there is still likely a lawsuit. He tried to call for help, couldn't because of the evil, bad, naughty, etc, etc theatre and he died of the poor dear, nwo give us $50 million dollars.
Can't see it happening on account of that.
It also might not be entirely without merit. If someone is having a problem fi
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Well if they don't hide the fact that you can't get a signal in the screen and seats area, you'll probably know where you have to go to get signal. This would probably save them the liability of a lawsuit and they could even bill it as a feature of their theater.
This will not help those who claim to be allergic (Score:2)
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The best part is you don't even have to pay for the expensive wallpaper, just get the regular stuff.
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That's not true.
These people -- whether they have a physical pathway that is known to medical science or not -- have a reaction to electromagnetic waves. This product blocks out those frequencies that they claim sensitivity to. If they feel better having bought the product, then what's the harm? You're not engaging in fraud, you are selling a product that blocks what they don't want in their house.
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These people -- whether they have a physical pathway that is known to medical science or not -- have a reaction to electromagnetic waves.
No. These people are having a reaction to something, and are blaming electromagnetic waves.
This is an important distinction. We must separate the effect from the claimed cause.
If the problem is truly psychosomatic and the thing they're reacting to is in their own heads, then in theory if you take away their chosen bugbear (and they are aware of it) they should feel better. But then again they may not, and will just say the Wifi wallpaper doesn't work or it's one of the many frequencies the wallpaper does
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These people -- whether they have a physical pathway that is known to medical science or not -- have a reaction to electromagnetic waves.
No. These people are having a reaction to something, and are blaming electromagnetic waves.
This is an important distinction. We must separate the effect from the claimed cause.
It's detrimental to their own quest for health because nobody can get past the idea that it must be caused by Wifi.
Oh, I had never thought of it that way. I just assumed they were having purely mental symptoms, so that blocking RF would help them out once they knew they were in a shielded room.
I would not have thought to look for a different cause. Now, if one can block RF and remove that from the list of possible causes of suffering, wouldn't that make it easier to diagnose what the problem could be?
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I hate those people. Now I have to put up with Anti-WiFi Wallpaper, which I'm all kinds of allergic to!
Warning to PC and smart phone users!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I used this wallpaper on my desktop, and now my wifi no longer works.
Took me a while to figure it out, but I've since switched back to my old wallpaper, and everything is fine now.
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Can be anti-wife too. (Score:2)
Just make it ugly enough, and it can be effective at reducing your chances of getting married.
Downside (Score:2)
Already available now. (Score:4, Informative)
Paint your wall with magnetic paint, wallpaper over it.
http://www.amazon.com/Rustoleum-223081-Rust-Oleum-Magnetic-Primer/dp/B000PU1D3I [amazon.com]
Paint your walls with two coats of this primer, and paint into the electrical boxes to where you can ground it. I used under wallpaper speaker wire that is just a stick thin copper foil, I ran a 3" strip out the electrical box connected to the ground, painted over it.
Wifi and cellular coverage in that room is completely lost when the door is closed (which is also painted) and I have aluminum storm windows and aluminum screens on the windows.
Made a huge difference to RF interference to my ham shack. the number of "birdies" from crap in the home went down to nothing so I could pull in signals that were closer to the noise floor a lot easier.
Just embed particles in drywall panels. (Score:2)
Most businesses when re-doing floorspace are going to move a few walls around. If they embed the silver particles in the drywall the business owner has the option of painting or wallpapering.
Block everything, install repeaters (Score:3)
That way, as technology changes, you can easily reconfigure the system to accommodate new requirements.
I'd guess that's what most people do anyway - since this wallpaper has taken so ong to be developed.
Certified by TFH Institute (Score:3)
Aluminum foil.. (Score:2)
The wide, heavy duty stuff, contact cement, conductive tape on joints, grounded at two points per unbroken plane. then cover with regular wall paper.
Brick (Score:3)
Silver wallpaper? Cool! It will go with the 5000-dollar brick I put on top of my stereo amplifier to screen out cosmic rays.
How long do you think it will be before Monster gets into the wallpaper market and starts suing anyone who uses the term "wallpaper" in their domain names?
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And as a bonus, the brick is a tiger repellant, too!
The Darkest hour - (Score:2)
What comes in mind is the apartment form The Darkest Hour movie :
http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/Sergeis-Faraday-Cage-The-Darkest-Hour-concept-art.jpg
Yeah, the movie wasn't great, but it was different enough from the usual space-monster-crap to be interesting. And the Faraday-cage apartment rocked :)
Patent time! (Score:2)
I'm going to patent the method and process of applying this technique through haberdashery to prevent control or surveillance of private contemplations.
What is old is new again (Score:2)
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Ungrounded Faraday cage aka antenna just makes it worse. Just close the steel rack door and you'll be all good.
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Frequencies near the blocks will be attenuated.
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Why would it be illegal? You made that up.
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LOL. That wasn't even close. It has nothing to do with grounding, never mind that at 2GHz, the grounding of the desk drawer is fairly immaterial anyway. Think about the impedance of the grounding wire and of the soil itself. The grounding wire will disrupt the RF field around it, but the fact that it ends in a spike in soil doesn't matter at all -- it'd only be measurable up for a few dozen MHz maybe.
The router is leaking RF energy through all the slots present between the drawer and the metal box the drawe
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Drywall would be much better, because you can easily mix additives into the plaster that would make it a bulk conductor: very good at dissipating RF energy away as heat. Making it selective would be a tad harder, though, because you'd need more targeted additives to act like distributed antennas with some resistance built in (say thin pieces of graphite "wire").
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You don't need to ground the aluminum foil to a water pipe. What for? All you need to get a phone off the air is a metal can with a tight-fitting, no-paint-along-the-line-of-contact metal lid. Old rectangular Twinnings tea cans with round lids would work without modifications I think. Newer Twinnings cans may need some sanding where the lid contacts the can, I'd think, but I didn't try it so just do it and report back :)
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