Jane & David said:

Has this happened to you? Was sitting in my big comfy chair yesterday,
when I heard a roar from the basement. Demons seem to have taken
possession of my dust collector.

No, but I HAVE had the air compressor come on in the middle of the
night - subsequently scaring ourselves and half the neighborhood out
of their beds... g

snip
Maybe this is why the Shop Fox was so much cheaper than the Long Ranger.
So has anyone else had their Shop Fox or Long Ranger remote triggered by
surprise?

I got a used and broken Long Ranger from someone here on the wreck.
(Who, incidentally, doesn't seem to come around anymore...)
The Long Ranger is an RF encoded digital remote. I'm not sure what
the Shop Fox is, RF or IR. IR is pretty much line of sight, but there
are plenty of RF devices that can play havoc with a poorly designed RF
unit - Garage Door openers, Car Remotes and Alarms all come to mind...
Have you tried reprogramming the remote to another binary pattern?
Does it even use digital encoding? Or is it a simple carrier trigger?

At any rate, I fixed it and it has never done this in 4 years of use
and having constant power applied. Look on the back of the unit - if
it says Made in China, well, now you know the _rest_ of the story...

FWIW,

Greg G.