Mouse – Keyboard – Wifi – A Layer 1 Trace

Mouse - keyboard - wifiOver the years I've used Metageek's WiSpy USB tracer a lot to figure out what is going on in the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band. When I was recently investigating a slow Wi-Fi which I ultimately nailed to a runaway Wi-Fi card I also picked up the signals of my wireless mouse and keyboard alongside my own Wi-Fi signal. The image on the left shows the three signals. The mouse transmitted near channel 2, the keyboard near channel 7 and the Wi-Fi center frequency is on channel 11. The green dots in the lower part of the image even show when I used the mouse and when I used the keyboard. The Wi-Fi was pretty dormant during the trace and the image was only created by the beacon frames of the Wi-Fi access point.