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oztules
Guru
Joined: 26/07/2007
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1686 |
| Posted: 10:53pm 11 May 2018 |
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Well it has happened.
It was a stormy night over here, and the lights went out at 10pm or thereabouts... and I felt a bit of excitement, as the lights died out.
Wow I wondered, after telling everyone how robust they were, MY inverter has stopped for some reason.
So I donned the jacket, grabbed a torch, and proceeded out to the shed to see why I was in darkness.
I had hoped to find a fault I had never seen before or.. or something interesting...... and I did.
In the wild winds, and rain, for some reason, these huge ... and I mean huge moths had congregated in the shed, and the only light for them was the meter lights... which attracted them big time.
The inverter in question had the usual dual inspire box, where the electronics are in the bottom box, and the tranny in the top one.... but I had run out of lids for some reason I can't explain... so only the control box had a front to it.
The boxes are joined together, but there is a slot about 25mm wide most of the way between the boxes. This allows for the cables from the heat sinks to the transformer a tidy ingress and egress between the boxes.
Well. the hundreds of man sized moths, found this slot, because the leds on the control card would have emitted some light out through the slot.
There was no wild life in the tranny box, but when I opened the bottom box front panel, there were hundreds of huge moths, and some little ones too, filling the box. It looked more like a bee hive full of huge bees.... and somewhere under all that pile of insects, was the control and power board.
Here are some of the lads that did not make their way out of the box under their own power
The unit was flashing 2 pulses, to say over current.
10 minutes later, after flushing out the marauding hoard, I found the control and power card again. This flushing was best done having the torch a few feet away, and they all made a bee-line to it... out of the box at least.
So I gingerly pressed the reset, and it came back to life straight away.... so I did not get to see a new reason for them to fail.... apart from little feet all over the control card.
They must have placed a low resistance across the chip pins somewhere, and it interpreted it as a current fault... thank goodness it turned off before they excreted anything potent on the card, and caused a real malfunction... a spider did this to my first W7 unit... and thats what started this journey in the first place.
So having pressed the reset, I quickly fashioned a cardboard cover to keep the blighters out, and it is still running the house this morning as if nothing happened.
I also have a shed full of homeless moths, which I hope bugger off, as they make a loud noise when they smack into the galv walls.. and annoy me when working out there.
So thats it, still no real failures, except for my shoddy uncompleted facia panel.
So... beware... wild life needs to be excluded from these things. In all the others, they have proper fronts, with weather seals.... but not this one for the last few months. This is just another spare having a few months burn in.
We didn't learn anything technically new... but it can be called a failure.
It looks a bit forlorn.
I will have to go out this morning and look for signs of excreta ,eggs or whatever to make sure.
.........oztulesEdited by oztules 2018-05-13
Village idiot...or... just another hack out of his depth |
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Warpspeed
Guru
Joined: 09/08/2007
Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
| Posted: 12:49am 12 May 2018 |
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Suggested next project...
A million volt insect zapper grid + light.
Cheers, Tony. |
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Madness
Guru
Joined: 08/10/2011
Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
| Posted: 03:02am 12 May 2018 |
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At least it wasn't a snake, but then maybe you don't have them there.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
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oztules
Guru
Joined: 26/07/2007
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1686 |
| Posted: 05:43am 12 May 2018 |
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Just on Chappel island, next to the one with the desalination and inverter I play with, there are the longest largest tiger snakes in the world..... they wouldn't fit.
No snakes on Big Green island, but snakes on all the rest.... and this one.
.....oztules
Village idiot...or... just another hack out of his depth |
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Madness
Guru
Joined: 08/10/2011
Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
| Posted: 07:11am 12 May 2018 |
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I thought you might have been like the Kiwis with no snakes. Maybe those man-sized moths carried the snakes there.
About 18 months ago I had a run of failures caused by little black ants, pressure pump controller and a few other things stopped because of them and they were in everything around my solar stuff but never caused a problem there. WD40 sprayed around where they want to walk stops them.Edited by Madness 2018-05-13
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
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noneyabussiness
Guru
Joined: 31/07/2017
Location: AustraliaPosts: 513 |
| Posted: 11:26am 12 May 2018 |
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I work for Queensland Education, and got chatting with one of the big wigs from the big smoke down south. . We got on to the cost of going solar etc. On the school roofs. He laughed and said they already hit budget limits just fixing electronic " things " because of " bugs ". He said the gecko being the main culprit, costing thousands upon thousands. ...
I guess being so soft and wet, they conduct really well..
I think it works !! |
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Madness
Guru
Joined: 08/10/2011
Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
| Posted: 12:04pm 12 May 2018 |
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Geckos make dollars for the air conditioning industry.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
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