AFDD: EMI nuisance trip nightmare??
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- BSEN62606 has a testing procedure for ensuring AFDDs comply with electromagnetic requirements, yet some of my models seem to have a headache when exposed to the noise from a lowly desk fan which raises a whole host of questions including, but not limited to, is it down to my unusual arrangement of having mixed models in the same enclosure against manufacturers’ instructions? Is EMI the reason Hager precluded their AFDDs from being retrofitted into older plastic enclosures? Why does the Chint trip off every 24-36 hours reporting an overvoltage? Was RF nuisance tripping the reason behind the Fusebox recall in October ’22? Why didn't MCG perform more real-world testing on basic motor loads? How does a motor load on my test rig stop me from cooking a pizza in my kitchen? How much longer will Asda have their buy-three-for-£22 offer on ten-packs of beer for? Why did the wife buy a case of Corona in 330ml cans when the Heineken and Strongbow cases have 440ml cans? Why is my urine bright orange with a fizzy head and my faeces the consistency of wet Play-Doh? With the amount of booze I put away, how am I not dead yet?
I'll ask the questions, you lot can sling in the answers! ...Go!
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Arcing creates an RF signal spread across a wide spectrum and was used in early radio experiments as a way to transmit information. just by shorting out a battery and creating arcs. For the high current observed I would think this is just down to the presence of an inductive load with a high inrush current that would normally only be short lived once the magnetic field had been created but because of the unstable power supply, that field is collapsing and recreated constantly - each time drawing a large current. I have some motors that arc where the brushes make contact with the rotor - I would imagine that these would cause issues with some AFDDs.
I don't think we mentioned inrush current which, as you say, is what we're seeing here.
I have noticed this with the air fryer in my house and a pair of TPlink internet over powerline plugs. It’s the only motor in the house which completely wipes out the network connection when it runs. Fortunately the bathroom cheapo bin extractor fan is not as bad though even that may have done it once or twice. Even more fortunately my Bosch boiler fan does not do it at all. This video and follow up comment does explain why the plugs go on the Fritz though - broad spectrum interference of an amplitude at some points greater than the signal itself is bound it crap it out.
Arc fault detection sounds like a very useful safety feature, but half these AFDDs don't detect actual arcs, and others get fooled by Dave getting gently blown in the twat-cave FM.
It sounds they need to:
1 - add shielding to protect against RF, and maybe EMPs while there there
2 - Give them enough brains to actually do the job their supposed to do
3 - finally throw in some din mounted fans and heatsinks to prevent these consumer unit supercomputers from cooking themselves
All this makes me miss replaceable fuse wire.
@@andyca15 I'm of the view that AFDs are like ISDN - Innovations Subscribers Don't Need - With the currents in domestic cables so low these days the detectors are probably having to be made increasingly more sensitive and their software more complex which is all well and good until there are external RF influences greater than the little sparks they are being designed to detect.
Add to that that there are so many badly designed power plugs and supplies around, and even higher frequencies are being utilised for communications devices, the general RF noise around a house can completely obliterate shortwave and other radio receivers and - clearly the protection devices themselves.
I’m not worried. I have Hager 💪 We know they don’t wanna trip 😂 ⚡️ 🔥
Hager AFDD can be replaced with a HBC cartridge fuse - guaranteed no nuisance tripping. In fact, no tripping at all.
Chauvin Arnoux sounds like the kind of company with an infinite wealth of knowledge on cottaging. Exactly what you needed in the shed David! Hopefully some of your weirdness will be resolved, but I'm not holding my breath 😘
French rural cottaging
Chauvin Arnoux does have a ring of Laboratoire Garnier about it...🤣🤣🤣
ua-cam.com/video/hdHFmc9oiKY/v-deo.htmlsi=jGnGECpkNuRzZDqv
Some 20 odd years ago my mum had a particularly annoying battery operated christmas toy that when switch on and playing it’s tune in the living room used to make the gas hob ignitor in the kitchen click to the beat. Glad I can finally put her mind at rest that it is not infact my long gone spirit of my grandmother dancing to the beat on the kitchen worktop and is purely down to some magical emi trickery she will be able to finally sleep at night, so thankyou, top vid as always sir
As a Radio amatuer I would say that the wires connecting the arc fault simulator are acting as antennae. The reason that the fan heater on heat does not cause the trip is the heater element shorts out the rf. the motor and the arc simulator are acting as a resonant circuit and there may also be a capacitor in the motor as well. I have had similar happen with an AC tig welder sending RF back up the line on one occasion even blowing up a fax machine on a seperate circuit in another building. I think that the current spikes are caused by back emf from the collapsing field of the motor, what I would like to see is the effect of ferrite beads on the lines and maybe an inductor between the load and the arc fault simulator. If you look at the scope you will see that the spikes are out of phase with the mains. I cannot see the scope clearly enough to measure and a proper full size DSO may be required in order to freeze the image for further study. The effect may well be caused by the shaded pole motor used in the small fan.
An arcing current running through a coil - sounds like all the makings of a Marconi spark gap transmitter.
When switched on the heater element will be in parallel with the fan motors coil. Adding the heating elements impedance across the motors coil will alter the circuits impedance resulting in a different electromagnetic waveform. Keep up the good work David I always look forward to watching your videos.
Probably has a run capacitor in it too. All the makings of an LC tank circuit!
Another great video, cheers David. If your ever in Bristol, give us a bell. I'll get you a dirty pint up weather spoons. 😊
It's a hot date mate!
Perfect saturday night entertainment, great video David and Julian!
Great to see pete waterman on the channel
Beats dicking around with toy trains
Noting is better than miniature trains
I agree and also suspect this is either due to radiated or cunducted EMI from the arc you are creating. With the heating element on the load is mostly resistive. With only the fan motor (a universal/induction motor?) on and not the heating element the load apears more reactive (inductive or capcitive) which will change the voltage current profile of the arc. This may result is higher or different arc emi emmissions that the afdds are more suseptable to. A spectrum analyser, or osciloscope with FFT function connecter to a small antena in the location would let you see the ambient radiated emision you are generating from the arc. The sdr dongle and waterfall image example does the same thing. You can use a current probe connected to a set up like this to show the conducted emi from the fan/arc. These are easy to make with a large fertite core with a few wraps of fine wire around and a series capacitor connected to the sdr dongle/spectrum analyser.
Hello Dave, from an old spark from the 60's. I love these fault finding problems videos of yours Dave, I had a very similar problems with pond pump and old wet and dry vacuum, it's back EMF generated from the motors, I cured mine by plugging them in to mains filters they are basically capacitative filters to to eliminate parasitic spikes in the mains. there again I could be wrong, I'm a degrading old fart anyway. Keep them coming Dave I really enjoy them, your the best Dave.
Peter.
Spark ignition in combustion engines have similar EMI noise problem. For example CAN bus has resistors on each end of signaling wires to absorb the power of regular signaling so the signal wouldn't be reflect back into the network from the otherwise open ended wire. The resistive load of your heater helps to absorb the inductive noise spikes from the fan.
(Other fun fact I'd like to add is that with transmitting radios you're not supposed to use them without antennas because the reflected signal might break the transmitter, the transmission power simply has to unload into something)
Dave doing his Hunt For Red October flashback bit. "Conn, sonar! Crazy Ivan!"
You said "very interesting" many times - and it was! I love this kind of stuff. I expect the tripping you're seeing in the main CU is not due to radiated interference from the arc chamber, but conducted interference - the arc is generating EMI that is then travelling back down the wires to the main CU and re-emerging there as EMI and tripping the AFDDs. The AFDDs must all have some kind of current sensor to do their job which will surely be some kind of coil, so the EMI is inducing voltages in their coils that the CPU then tries to interpret. I bet you would never get a traditional RCD device to trip with this experiment. The AFDD is only as smart as the algorithm running on the CPU and that is only as good as the info it gets from the current sensing coil, so when you put a load of noise into the current sensing coil all bets are off.
What a setup.
Looks like conducted emissions EMI problem.
Trouble with this is you need to get an ENC to expert to speak with a materials expert in each manufacturer. I have referred this in my job and witnessed non compliant carnage for major national products..
Electrical manufacturing sector is the Wild West.
They don’t know nor chose not to care.
There is equipment and a multitude of bits and bobs you can get.
When I was looking at DNC we used A number of CA meters. Connected to a PC via guitar amp connectors to allow more than standard amount of monitor clamps to be synchronised!
Keep digging.
That truly is quite the setup you have produced! Remarkable Sir!
Hi David, another great video and very interesting as always. Thank you
Thanks for providing the (possibly faulty) Fusebox Andrew!
@@dsesuk No Thank you and your EMF. LOL Funny it also goes off when I play the guitar
@@AndrewBrownEngTechTMIET I told you last time, your friggin' guitar ain't welcome at the party Andrew. Don't make me block you!
I do a lot of social housing work, We now install an AFDD on the kitchen ring. I've had an instance of a short in a faulty shower pull tripping the RCBO of the shower circuit AND the AFDD serving the kitchen ring. Seems they all do random things.
Should of added they are Verso.
Hi David, I’ve seen reports of AFDDs and RCDs/RCBOs being tripped by nearby radio transmitters - for example by neighbouring radio amateurs, utilities using walkie-talkies and even when people have mart meters installed that use 4G to call home. So it seems pretty likely that the devices are quite RF sensitive. The fan motor is an inductor in series with your arc-chamber is acting as a transmitter. Same with the drill.
I’m sure if there was a real-world problem with tripping it could be fixed by wrapping a couple of turns of the wire feeding the breaker through a ferrite toroid, if there was room in the CU. That’s what radio folk often do if they need to suppress RF getting places where it is unwanted.
Thanks for the report you sent through by the way Richard - I don't think I replied to you, my apologies for that, but it made for interesting reading.
The ferrite toroid should deal with conducted interference along the wiring but might not do much about radiated interference - although a metal enclosure helps a lot. There is however a downside in that it would make the AFDD less effective because that would also reduce the "signal" created by an arc which is supposed to make it trip.
My experience (from many years ago when I worked on computer network equipment) is that dealing with EMC problems can be far from simple if you want to avoid simply putting everything inside shielding with expensive filters on all external connections.
That could stop the operation of the AFDD.....
@@dsesuk You did actually in the comments of your last video! So double thanks for your double thanks - or is that dual-pole thanks!
@@Richardincancale Oh. I'm usually pissed when addressing comments so I forget what I've said and to whom! I retract my thanks from this video!
Didn’t have these problems with MCB’s, as usual like most things these days far too complicated than it needs to be.
It's widely know in the outdoor events world that handheld radios used near circuit breakers in production portacabins etc. can trip them.
From that graph you showed at the end, notice the voltage spikes at the same time, so to me it looks like the inductive loads when being disturbed are acting like the coil of a boost converter, dumping voltage spikes into the circuit, potentially also causing phase issues within the sine wave which mess up the crest factor. Obviously this is aside to the EMI being generated at the same time. A comment I heard made was that the drill was better that one of the other devices, this is probably because the drill has an interference suppression capacitor inside it across the motor to quieten that stuff down.
Writing this part way through the video, arc fault devices are notorious for being spuriously triggered by RFI. I know in the USA some brands were particularly troublesome and if you operated radio transmitters and they were a problem you could get an updated arc fault device. I suspect that in your example the heating element in the heater damps the inductive spike from the small motor, hence the behaviour you have seen. It might be interesting to see if a mains filter between the fan and the outlet affects the tripping.
RF of course behaves very differently to low frequency AC. (For example you can put significant current into a single piece of wire with the far end totally unconnected to anything.)
Also wires that lay beside each other can significantly capacitively couple. Regarding the SDR you will find much of the RFI is far lower in frequency, part of the reason VHF radios tend to be fairly unscathed by the appliances etc. Some SDR dongles will not readily cover lower frequencies but if yours does look lower in frequency, maybe a few MHz.
At the end of the day the most important thing is that if an arc is trying to set your house on fire then you should know about it. So the more things that get tripped off the better. It's a design feature.
I'm getting flashbacks to the smart meter + Square D issue..! Many hours wasted there. My takeaway is
1 - avoid AFDDs as much as possible
2 - if unavoidable use Hager, as they have done the industry a favour by creating products that wouldn't trip at a Jimi Hendrix concert
The more I see of AFDDs, the more I think Hager have the right idea. Arc faults and RF are nonsense and their devices aren't fooled by 'em!
Do you think the unconnected AFDD's would still trip if they had a load connected to them? May be something interesting to test?
One must take into account that the motor in the fans are inductive devise. the arc you have introduced will cause an intermittent back EMF in the circuit. The under lying principle that RCDs work is balance. “What goes in must come back” If you introduce a Back EMF to the live bus bar it will be out of phase to the mains incoming voltage and hence be seen by the RCD as an in balance on the inductive coil in the RCD and trip. Remember the inductive coil in the RCD in the on position is constantly energised even if current is not passing through the RCD
Would be interesting to see the conducted susceptibility test results for their CE ACUK testing.
if the drill is a brushed motor, then you can look at all the sparks generated by the commutator. some motors have better suppression then others.
You've just tripped out the ICU in the local hospital
My neighbour's pacemaker was going nuts during all of this... may he rest in peace.
Nice recommendation from @ELECTRICIANSPODCAST using SDR to visualize the interference. Any chance of recreating the same low current ARC with the same SDR display, but *without* any of the AFDD's in the loop?
I'm interested if it's the device (fan motor, inductive load) itself or the tuning of the AFDD to the related frequencies actually causing the radio interference (ie the AFDD tuned circuit acting as an amplifier). Keep up the awesome work!
At a low current you effectively have an ark transmitter. Switch the heating coil in it will damp the tank circuit. Bilton Ark transmitter got EMC problems this is not surprising
Spark gap is wide band RF transmitter. Try moving a UHF walky talky radio close, quite a few RCBO’s will trip, especially older ones. Smart meters trip some of them too when they transmit, sparkies then wasting hours looking for an intermittent fault that doesn’t exist. We found 350-700MHz at just over 7V/m would trip some.
A good reminder of why I won’t be fitting these things any time soon 😂
The SDR dongle is pretty cool.
Hi Dave I'm having the same problem with individual Niglon rcbo's where a ring circuit under minimum load is causing a 6amp lightning robo to trip occasionally cheers Andy
Creating wideband interference with the low power fan only. When the heater is selected its low resistance suppresses the inductive created wide band. Suspect you will find the cheaper small fans have no interference suppression capacitors whereas the large fan and drill will have them. Nice spectrum analyser function from the SDR.
Good to see Nigel has let his hair down and found his true self during the weekends
Might be interesting to try scattering some clip on ferite beads arround your setup. It might stop the coupling... it might also stop the in service afdd from tripping!
I wonder if this is why manufactures are type testing these devices to their steel consumer units as they form a Faraday cage and reduce the RF interference. It may explain why they declare them incompatible with the older but sometimes mechanically compatible plastic consumer units.
Yes, I suspect this is the reason Hager say theirs can't be used in pre-18th Edition boards.
Hi David,Wow some very interesting weirdness going on there mate, that chap that had a pop at me yesterday on that Stupid video of his should watch your videos he might learn something.
I found this video very interesting and informative and i would be interested to see if you get to the bottom of all this weirdness.
Thanks for another fantastic video Mate .👍
Yeah, he claimed it was all a joke Sean - one us old people don't get!
@@dsesukhe’s a pilchard
Years back there was reports of smart meters effecting RCBO's due to EMI. I seem to remember something being said about the length of neutral leads and plastic enclosures exacerbating the issue. I see you are using a metal fusebox esque enclosure (which I assume is grounded) but the front cover is missing and I recall your wylex box is plastic.
Shove a farraday cage and some mains smoothing filters at it....
Alright if you have a big budget and space to put it.
Had a strange one myself although nothing to do with AFDD, I have a ceiling fan in my room and I have added a remote control kit to turn it on and off, I also have a TV with a samsung sound bar and when I set one speed with the remote on the fan then adjust it using the pull cord thing to get a variation of speeds, It momentarily mutes the sound bar, no mute symbol nothing.
Here comes the 19th edition, plastic boards required, the metal ones are causing AFDD harmonic noise feedback.
Question. Do you have a Tp-link powerline in the house or mancave? People use them as WiFi extender, it sends the signal down the power cables of a house and out the other end. They generate a lot of noise on cables and can upset RCBOs
I don't have such Sergio, but Lewden told me they'd found such devices to be problematic with AFDs.
rf radiating from the arc and or radiated via the conductor it’s connected to ie the bus bar being used as an ariel.
A decent spectrum analyser maybe handy.
Or a Rf field meter
All i know? I cannot plug the vacuum into GFCI. The big mixer works fine though.
useful , peace out- David-
Some smart meter when transmitting back to base have been known to trip RCBO's and RCD's in close proximity due to RF interference being picked up by the devices. On the site we cover they have been rolling out Wylex AFDD Consumer Units and when I turn up for general maintenance most time I lift the lid for safe isolation to see Xmas lights flashing indicating numerous problems. I have two properties that have Class 2 cooker hoods that intermittently trip the circuit 32a AFDD with the fault reporting as "earth Leakage" faults. On inspection and test, no faults are found (insulation, continuity, etc and physical inspection). In one case the cooker hood was changed with the same intermittent results. These issues are unresolved. The motors on these cooker hoods are capacitor run motors. It may just be circuit characteristics acting like an antenna "picking up" interference.
Balanced circuits have a measure of immunity to electromagnetic interference, if you have a double insulated cooker hood and the flex is just live and neutral you have a balanced feed and where the wires separate in the equipment there is a good chance of creating a dipole antenna.
@@timballam3675 Great. That may explain why Dave's oven circuit seems to trip off in sympathy. It may have the characteristics than make it an ideal antenna for this RF interference. The all electronic compact RCBO/AFDD electronics interpret this as various fault types and trip. So when do we start using all steel cable containment and ferrite beads on the wiring?
So its because the arcing is happening so close? It that arc creator was on the other side of the room it wouldn't be a problem? The devices tripping are directly above the arc.
It tripped a board elsewhere in the property
The proximity was something we were wondering about, but then the unrelated Wylex devices popping off in DB1 suggests the effects can cover a few metres.
@@dsesuk yea I only saw that after the comment 🤔
Great video Dave , brushed or brushless motors ? copper colis in motors amplifying rf ? place fans in small faraday cage .
Nice to see Nigel after a long holiday 😂
The motor is an inductive load, so the voltage spikes will be much higher. With the heater element connected thopse spikes will be disipated into the heater. With the heater off, these voltage spikes will be getting onto the main bus. And possibly betting onto the common bus, through the AFDD connected. Then into the other AFDD's?
My assupmtion is that AFDDs are listening to high freq noise to trip. But they are not big enough to contain any meaningful way to filter noise from passing through to the main bus. So they will pass some noise through to the bus, but also are sensitive to noise on the bus.
Only 10mins into the video.... Waits to see if I was right....
The drill might have some supression components, which are reducing the spikes. But the heater might be cheapo and has no supression built in?
At the bit with the SDR...
You would be better looking at long-wave (200kHz), which will be closer to the region where the AFDDs are sensitive.
Also I believe the problems are conducted noise, rather than radiated. (due to the longer wavelengths.)
Thanks, David. So what are the field strengths required for unexpected failures? We have never come across anything like this, even though both the arc generator and the carbonized cable are centimeters away from all kinds of circuit breakers.
Hi Yury. Thanks for tuning in again. I'm afraid there's no point in asking me clever questions and expecting clever answers - I just dick around with these things and hope the audience can explain what's going on! I suspect it's the inrush currents of these cheap fan motors causing a wideband RF that some devices are more susceptible to than others, but really it's all out of my league and I have nothing to measure it with other than my patience!
@@dsesuk we are interested in the idea of radio frequency interference in itself. There are a few things about the work of the AFDD at the contractors facilities that we can't explain. Thanks for the kick! 😁
The 2 things i can think of that could be causing this is them fans for some reason probally die to cheapness dont jave x2 interferance capacitors fitted across libe and neutral this can cause interferance with radios also back emf could they be pumping out short spikes that other higher power loads are quenching it seems like they were over looked due to there low power.
Makes sense, I mean the first radio transmitters were based on spark gap technology!
If we piss around with it for long enough, we might get in touch with Marconi himself!
@@dsesuk I remember we had an old vacuum cleaner which used to make the image on the old CRT TV set set go all crazy 😂
Be interesting to see what happened if you put the arc chamber on db1 or plugged it in a socket on db1 see if affected any other afdd
I suspect it's conducted interference which is causing the AFDDs to operate, but when you have conducted noise you have radiated noise, which is why your temperature monitor (a.. less than stellar piece of engineering, most likely) goes fruity and obviously you can hear it with a nearby radio.
I wonder how AFDDs take to say, homeplugs, considering they studiously forget to perform any conducted emissions compliance testing on them for some unknown reason.
When you say homeplugs, do you mean those network extender things? Lewden told me they'd had instances of AFD trips which were down to those things being in use.
@@dsesuk Precisely. Somehow not surprised - horrible devices, but on the market and by the sound of it, sure to cause grief to more than amateur radio enthusiasts in the near future.
@@dsesuk enphase solar microinverters communicate with the enphase envoy controller box using similar network-over-mains tech. Would be interesting if an enphase solar PV install knocks out an AFDD on adjacent circuit, again wasting hours of time testing the wrong thing
Interesting part f of the building regs changed recently, effectively mandating 'contunuous' running fans to new builds.Im not suggesting this is to confuse more AFDD's and indirectly Electricians on purpose.
Good evening
Can you publish a full diagram of how the breakers are wired? Could be the unbalanced circuits with the lives in close proximity, a bit like how the led lights can flash even when switched off.
The wiring's quite simple - a 16A MCB feeds the rig with neutral to a bar that all AFDD flyleads connect to and line daisy chained to each AFDD input. The output of each device goes to a double-pole switch. The output of each double-pole switch is connected together with a single return pair of wires to the arc chamber; neutral going directly to the socket, line going through the chamber contacts. The wiring in the enclosure is crowded and electric fields can (and will) permeate between neighbouring cores, however even with just two devices on, say the Lewden and the Fusebox with the former switched to power the fan, the Fusebox will still erroneously trip off suggesting electric fields aren't causing the issue in the same way as they can on LED lighting (as demonstrated in my portable test rig video from eighteen months ago).
One word Harmonics . Different frequencies floating about created by the arcing effects the magnetic fields of the equipment used to initiate the the trips ,
Causes havoc .
I do think we are over complicating things ie AFdds ,
screening cables can help remove harmonic interference deep joy as we complicate matters and ultimately cause our own unintentional shit storm 😂😂 have fun.
Are all the double pole selection switches functioning correctly? With an off scale high ohmic value across the terminals, when the switch is open? Or to put it in a simply, are they breaking correctly, when the switch is off??
I have checked to ensure there's not something daft going on - not that I can be a hundred percent convinced I've overlooked anything - but the fact things don't misbehave on high loads or on linear loads leads me to conclude it's inrush current on cheap motor inductive loads creating enough RF to trouble certain devices. The fact unrelated AFDDs in DB1 have been observed to clock off pretty much eliminates any other possibility as far as I can see.
@@dsesuk I’d agree it’s an RF issue, I wrote that comment 10 minutes into the video !!! Then when you see the stand alone battery operated temperature display and remote AFDD’s in the upstream board playing up, I tend to concur with you fine gents. It reminds me of previous issues with MEM RCBO pods and walkie-talkies setting them off! 👍
SDR: receiving in FM mode gives the radio some (quite a bit) of immunity to excursions in the amplitude of signals. If you were to select AM as your modulation method, then you would of course likely see more of the interference. The other point being that you were checking for interference to signals in the FM broadcast band, the truth might actually be that AM interference is likely to be more pronounced in the low middle and high parts of the LF, MF, and HF spectrum [DC to UHF]. Certainly you will likely find that energy is radiated non-linearly over the spectrum shit happens only sort of randomly.
What your SDR actually is, is a very poor man's SPECTRUM ANALYSER, but it can only view specific segments of the RF spectrum at any given moment.
What might be helpful to you - I'm too smart to suggest what you should be doing - is to find a bod or a company that will visit your cave with a spectrum analyser to view the spectrum from something like 100kHz to UHF then zone in on where the action seems to happen.
A word of advice - That sort of instrument is like a super wide band radio and VERY expensive, as you might realise, so even suggesting that someone were to come into your cave with such a device, might give them more than a squeaky bum feeling. You might fish a lot and get few bites as people tend to love their kit quite lot and your high current environment might make them really nervous.
It does seem to be the way forward, given that you have identified that RF energy is at the heart of the issue.
Maybe the answer is lots of ferrite chokes.
Imagine the issues with high power transmitter controls if the RF energy gets into the box. Instead the boxes for such things tend to be heavily screened, with ferrite chokes protecting each conductor entering or leaving, and oodles of decoupling capacitors to remove the unwanted RF to ground.
Good Luck - I think that with recent development sparkies have just made the transition into the world of RF engineering, in much the same way that car mechanics have had to embrace ECU's and networking technology as things get ever smarter.
I enjoy your approach, which likely causes a lot of cucumber sandwiches to curl, but you call it like you do and I have no problem with that. I even cringe at times, so you must be doing things right.
Had to scroll a long way for this comment.
Also, you can see the whole band dips as the AGC drops due to the noise.
Set to AM, set to a lower frequency in Khz not MHz and turn off AGC. Should give a more useful waterfall.
@@StuartTaylorEsquire I'm inclined to agree with you, but Davo and friends have to start somewhere. I'm a rather old CW (Morse) operator and AGC wasn't a particularly good friend. Listening for a weak signal and when it appears, or there is a bit of a crash on the frequency due to atmospherics, the receiver would desense just long enough to make the signal impossible to read. In Data modes we tend to run without AGC and let the software discriminate the signal from the noise - just like the MKI earhole.
Ah, a fellow ham 😎
The trouble Dave and his cohort may find (pretty quickly) is that RFI generated by back EMF is on the border of science and PFM (pure flippin magic).
Nothing like a spark gap for a broad band transmitter.
73
@@StuartTaylorEsquire G0PAI - also ex RAF Telegraphist.
@@ianleitch9960 M5ST 👋
Worrying my Wylex 😂
Well this clearly isn't going to make electrician's jobs harder, with no support from manufacturers who will claim that it's not been installed correctly or an unsuitable appliance has been plugged in whenever a fault crops up...
Of course, HMOs (where these are required) are known for always only having the most perfect appliances plugged in (ahem).
In an ideal world, an independent third party lab would test all of these in a standard repeatable way for every manufacturer under every likely practical scenario and we wouldn't have to rely on UA-cam's sweariest expert to carry out the research!
The first manufacturer to work with Dave in a video and be open about their testing and possible limitations/downsides of the technology will get my custom as a brand to use in the future if I ever have to fit AFDD, (but I won't hold my breath)
I changed a board and installed AFDD to the kitchen ring had to go back twice as the thing kept tripping, we worked out it was the microwave causing it to trip but not every time you used it. I will never install AFDD again absolute dog 💩
get a little sdr radio and see what frequencies are being generated.
Ah Ok never-mind :)
Because of the endless number of problems with arc-extinguishing switches, this proposal appeared:
Take an ordinary circuit breaker and make a beautiful inscription on its body (AFDD), the results will be 20 times cheaper and, most importantly, we will remove all false shutdowns!
So now its turn up to the job, see an AFDD installed say to the client "it could be your next door neighbours fan".......That will be £80 for the call out Bye
I suspect if you have a decent brand with like devices installed in a metal enclosure, then the likelihood of false tripping is perhaps reduced. It does show though that you have to take a look at what's installed and how to ascertain whether RF noise could be producing a false positive.
@@dsesuk Can you imagine explaining that to a client......
I'll tell you what his thinking "these AFDD'S are shite . Eaton Memsheild 2 RCBO's used to trip out if you had a walk talkie near it.
I've seen old Hager RCBOs do it too. Nige and I were working on a commercial site using PMR446 walkie talkies and they were taking out the bloody things! I have it on video - should have used it on this presentation!
Your neighbours called, their devices keep tripping, turns out they are on the same phase as you 🤣 be interesting to see a spectrum analyser on it, see what frequencies are hanging about.
Got to be harmonic
Hmm. your CU 4m away has a plastic enclosure.
Have seen this. . . seen? That's not right. . . have been told by customers that their RCD's have suddenly started nuisance tripping when smart meters - with their GSM SIM cards in them - had been installed next to them. Their CU's were plastic too.
Wondering if your Wylex CU was a metal, would this stop emi causing breakers within to trip?
Also, in secondary school science, we used to take the piezo electric lighters for the Bunsen burners and spark them next to the digital LCD timers. This would cause the readings on them to go all over the place. Mr Scott, my awesome teacher said this was "Electrostatic Interference"
Maybe you could try putting one of those piezo electric spark lighters near the AFDD's and see what happens?
Funnily enough I did just that - used a piezo lighter around my AFDDs, to no effect sadly. I was also pissing around trying to make a strobe light into a localised EMP emitter. It may be the case that changing DB1 from plastic to metal reduces the risk of erroneous tripping. I can't be arsed though - at least, not unless it becomes an actual problem!
AFDD's are just pants more trouble than they are worth just stick with RCBO's
Definitely caused by solar flares.
Brexit
Howdy "Davo Savo" ( is that your new official title?) from the shit tip that is the Maldives with it 33Ç, talcum powder sandy beaches and "bath hot" waters. Not to mention cocktails a plenty and ice cold beer. 😉 Another interesting installment proving we know feck all about what we think we know. Interesting not to hear anything, good or bad about "Le Hagar" AFDD. Wonderful to hear the correct pronunciation of Show-van Are-noo for once..... Let fat Sam and Jamie in on it will you? 😂 Talking of Jamie, can you tell the @#&+er to put on his seatbelt and look after that baby properly? WTF is up with him? Looks of love and wish you were here etc
Sounds great Olly! Don't worry about Jamie though - that was all green-screen. He's reckless... but not that reckless! Enjoy your holiday and don't let this nonsense eat up all your data allowance!
For fucks sake lets just scrap this ammend 3 and not bother with afdd,s. Make our lives a lot better.
I'm starting to form the opinion they're junk.
Did the Hager trip, well did it??? Course it didn't David, of course it didn't, the Hager won't be fooled by such Tom foolery, in fact even if there is a fault that the Hager should trip for it bloody well won't. Good strong and stable Hager, swimming against the tide of change, marching their own path, off to China to open up new pork markets...🤣🤣🤣
Nah, the Hager didn't trip once during all this messing about. But then, the Hager only seems to trip if you're trying to use your washing machine on a 40 degree cycle!
@@dsesuk FFS the next thing they'll do to the AFDDs is add RF shielding, a Faraday cage, if you will, inside, or on the outside of the AFDD.
That may result in the addition of a ground wire on the AFDD for safety, especially if the RF shielding is on the outside, or as part of the plastic body.
Won't that be fun
Talk about rushing a product to market without any proper real world testing
This AFDD stuff is getting more and more out of hand.. we now have these devices triggering from completly unrelated faults.. im sorry but thats impossible to diagnose in a real site with hundreds of circuts/boards. This should never have been passed into the ecosystem.
Not more afdd nonsense 😮
It never ends Ryan.
Your shed may be haunted, the ghost of Dr. Oswald Hager is hounding you for your hatred of his products...🤣🤣🤣🤣
You better get in Derek Acorah... "Oh it's an angry spirit,... He says he hates you, he says he's gonna f$%k with your electrical testing forevermore cos of what you said about Hager..." 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hager will see from this video that their device didn't trip (no surprise there) unlike my Wylex - I'm worried they'll sit outside my house with a CB radio to fuck with my house AFD's in DB1 to get back at me!
@@dsesuk Maybe hager are on to something with their industry leading trip resistance after all. It would be far from ideal for a dodgy fan to trip off the power for a hospital ICU.
Marconi spark transmitter, nice job! damped waves
IEC 61000-4-30 Class-A
Next door probably kept losing their WiFi that afternoon!
@@dsesukinteresting video
Couple of Months ago BT were investigating why Broadband kept going down in a Devon village at 12.40 every day, turned out it was EMI from an Elderly couples arcing washing machine.