Once upon a time m_jessing shaped the electrons to say... > Two things to keep in mind - UPS' are for computers, surge suppressors > are for TV's etc. UPS systems are designed for computers so in the
That's not really true. UPSes are for *anything* you want to ride out power fluctuations or outages. But you need to buy a UPS sized for the device(s) you plan to connect to them. You can get a whole home UPS which will power *everything* electric in your home when the power goes out. But they costs thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars. And they go down to little powerstip UPSes which are litle more than a power strip surge protector with a built-in battery, which has just enough juice to keep a PC running for a few minutes. Also, it is pretty much unheard of to have a UPS that doesn't include surge suppression. Some go farther and do full power conditioning. The real reason you may not want to connect a TV to a UPS is that the TV is generally sucking a LOT more power than any of your other devices. So you first need to buy a UPS sized to handle that power draw, and second it will deplete the battery faster when the power goes out. I do connect mine to the UPS, to protect it from any flickers, but if the power goes out completely for more than a minute I turn the TV off to preserve the battery life. UPSes used to be fairly expensive and so only got used for highly valuable items, like computers which were also very expensive. But UPSes are fairly cheap now, and what is a computer these days? Your TiVo, game console, Blu-ray player, etc, are all more powerful computers than a PC just a few years ago. > without losing data or damaging the system. Surge suppressors are for > electronics like TV's, receivers, etc that need 'clean' and 'steady' > electricity going into them without spiking etc. Note that most surge supressors do not do power conditioning. They're basically just circuit breakers designed to cut out in the event of a power spike - a surge. But they don't really protect against 'dirty' power - flucuating volatage levels, etc, which can occur when the grid is overloaded, such as brownouts. A good UPS will protect against those because the battery provides steady power even if the power from the wall varies. > So for your electronics - go w/Tripp Lite. Tripp Lite is a good brand, I'm partial to APC myself. > Finally, NOTHING will protect your equipment from a direct lightning > strike. Not completely true. There are whole home surge protection and UPs systems that are designed to protect against lightning. They shunt any surge straight to ground and provide MUCH better protection. They're similar to commercial systems used to protect large buildings, radio towers, etc. The ones you plug into the wall though, not so much. They may protect from a nearby strike, but if the house is hit and the wires energized by lightning, odds are they won't be rated to handle it. But that doesn't mean your gear is dead. Systems usually only get fried when they're in the path between the power and ground. The current is looking for a way to ground, and will find the path(s) there. This is how the surge protectors work too. They shunt the surge to ground. Which, BTW, means they MUST have a connection to ground to work. If you have a home with old wiring with two-prong outlets (no ground plug), surge protectors will do jack for you. I've seen people connect them to the plugs using those two-prong to three-prong adapters. That mean the aurge protector is nothing but a power strip, no connection to ground means no protection. And some of the adapters have a little metal loop you can put the outlet screw through, which is meant to provide grounding. But that only works if the outlet mounting itself is grounded - which is done in some old installations that used metal wrapped wiring by connecting that outer wrap to the outlet box. If you have old two-prong prong outlets you should operate as if you have no ground protection. And cargo cult wiring of just swapping out the two-prong outlets for three-prong outlets is just as pointless as one of those adapters. There needs to be a wire connected back to earth ground. And yes, I've seen that done too. In fact, the house I own now had outlets like that which I insisted be fixed before I bought it. How did I know? You can pick up a circuit tester at any home iumprovement store fairly cheap. A lot cheaper than replacing your gear. I tested every outlet in the house during my pre-purchase inspection. Also, even if there is a connection to ground it shouldn't be too long. Ideally you want a run of less than 10' from the outlet to earth ground to have optimal grounding, to help ensure the current doesn't find an 'easier' path - through something you like. Now, some will claim that plug in surge protectors are worthless and provide no protection at all. I disagree with that. I have personally had gear protected by standalone surge protection strips as well as the built-in protectors in UPSes. Where the protector tripped out in a surge during a storm, etc. Maybe without it something would've been damaged, maybe not. But considering the cost of the protectors I'd rather not find out the hard way. I'd use UPSes anyway because of the protection from brownouts and dirty power, which can damage gear just like a surge can. Also note that while other wires coming into your home, like cable, satellite, and phone, are supposed to be grounded to protect from strikes, that's not always the case, and even when grounded the grounding my be insufficient. Also copper water pipes make an excellent conductor and are supposed to be grounded where they enter the house. This is why you've probably heard that you shouldn't shower, use a corded phone, etc during a storm. And also why some protectoes have coax connections on them for your cable TV wiring. Honestly the risks are very, very low. I know I don't worry about showering during a storm, I have better odds of dying dozens of other ways. But I have seen gear fried through other connections. Back in 95-98 I worked for a hardware vendor, Livingston Enterprises, and we made communication servers for ISPs, corporations, etc. We supplied some huge ISPs, and were the leading supplier to small ISPs. If you've dialed into the Internet via modem there are very good odds you were dialing into a Livingston PortMaster. And today if you ever authenticate an connection - dial-in, DSL, WiFi, etc - it is almost certainly being handled by RADIUS on the back end, which was initially developed by Livingston. Anyway, so the point is we had a LOT of hardware out in the field which mean we sometimes got units back after they were damaged. While there I got to see boards fried by lightning hits where the surge came *in* over the phone line to the modem, or over an ISDN connection (physically same thing). It'd blow chips clear off the circuit board and you could see the circuit traces fried like a scorched trail. We knew it came in that way because there were fuses on the board and the fried portion would be between the physical jack and the fuses, which meant the surge was on that side, it couldn't have passed from power through the fuse to fry the 'far' side of the trace. I've also seen physical modems, like the old USR Courier (very poopular before 56K modems) with the phone side just totally blown apart by a strike. So if you have a TiVo or other device connected to a phone line it could take a hit that way. And, ironically, good grounding on the power connection could hurt - if the path from the modem through the unit to ground is good it could be the preferred path for the surge. Pretty much every physical modem has protection in the form of fuses, but if it takes a hit it still means the modem is dead, sacrificing itself for the rest of the unit. This seemed to happen a lot on S1 TiVos, I suspect the protection was a little over sensitive and could be tripped by smaller spikes other units ride out. It is also possible for your Ethernet network to take a hit, but that's very rare. If the DSL or cable data connection into yoru home takes a hit it is most likely to fry the DSL/cable modem and stop there, without continuing on into the network wiring. And if you have a router connected to the modem (which most people do, and is a good idea), if it gets past the modem it'd most likely fry the router and stop there. Though it is possible that if some device is connected to power and Ethernet - and really, that's pretty much all devices with Ethernet - if it takes a hit over power it *could* energize the Ethernet and kill the next device in the chain. I have seen faulty devices do that accidentally, an internal short dumping high current levels onto the Ethernet, killing the device it was connected to - or at least killing the network port. But I've gone on for far, far too long. So I'll shut up. I have too many old 'war stories' from past jobs. -MZ -- megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me. http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
