B-O-O-M-!!! (the culprit is discovered)

[johnridley]

This evening I went to address the fact that the dog's contain collar hasn't worked for a while. I replaced the battery and went to test it since it didn't seem like the old battery was in that bad a shape. Didn't work. So I went to the garage to check on the transmitter. Pilot light was out. Checked and found that the transformer wasn't plugged into the wall. Dug around and found it on the floor, with the plastic case off and the wires all chewed up. OK, some rodent likes wires.

Went inside to show J and to try to find a replacement wall-wart. Then realized, "that doesn't look like chewing. Actually, that looks a lot like the windings exploded." Went and got the transmitter box; it rattled.

It's been about 2 months since we got our close lighting strike; I think now we know what it hit; it must have hit the wire loop that the dog's collar runs on. The inside of the transmitter that's hooked to that loop is covered with black soot, a toroid was blown right off the board, the controller chip has a crater in it, and the transformer has the above mentioned damage. Check it out. I think this is the probable entry point for a big ole' spike.

Comments

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

I like how the cap just left to the pot looks spherical.

I think you can safely say that you've found the reason why the collar isn't working anymore.

[tceisele.livejournal.com]

Wowsers! We lost a radio fence controller to a lightning strike, too, but nothing like that. Ours just stopped sending out a signal, there was no obvious internal damage and the lights still lit up. We probably just had a strike close enough to send a strong radio pulse down the line and lightly toast the processor. Yours certainly looks more like a direct hit. I especially like the detonated wall-wart.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

yeah, the way the windings were ripped apart, it really looks to me like they were pulled apart by their own magnetic field. That's a HUGE pulse, like the kind of thing you get in a quarter-shrinker. I think it's likely that it was able to induce several hundred volts on the mains side even against the load on that side.

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

Looking at the damage, I think it came in the power side -- it looks like the power input is the jack on the right side of that pic, right. The traces on the loop plug look fine, but all the stuff near the power input is dead several ways.

I amused that the toroid was able to eject before going down in flames....

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Nope, the blown apart bit on the top is the secondary. The terminals you see on the bottom lead to much thinner wires that you can barely make out that lead to the winding that's still intact.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I think that if the surge came in from the mains and caused this kind of damage, it would have exploded half the equipment in our house, rather than just minorly messing up a couple of mainboards.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

BTW, if I replace this, it will NOT be with another Innotek system.
We had a PetSafe before this, and it was fine. I went with Innotek because they had a combo contain/train system. I should have just bought their training collar.
The PetSafe worked great, we paid a bit over $100 at Lowes for it. The Innotek I think I paid nearly $300 for over the web. It falses a fair amount; the dog gets shocked if she gets too close to the TV or the vacuum cleaner. I don't like it much. It also goes through 4LR44 batteries several times a year; the PetSafe took two CR2032s, which are about 40 cents each and which I keep a bunch of around, about twice a year.

Unfortunately PetSafe has now gone to a proprietary battery, though it looks like it could be just a couple of CR2032s in a plastic wrapper.

[tceisele.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that the PetSafe "stubborn dog" collar[1] just uses a standard 9-volt battery, but I see that they seem to have redesigned everything recently, so now I'm not so sure. They are selling some moderately outrageously priced Duracell 9-volts on their battery page, so it probably does still use 9-volts.

[1] Yes, we have stubborn dogs.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I'll probably wind up with PetSafe. I might try to find an older version that takes standard batteries though.
our dog doesn't need the extra zap, she stays pretty well anyway. If she decides to run the fence, it doesn't matter how high I turn the zap (the Innotek has 5 strength levels), she'll run it anyway. Generally this only happens when I've been standing in the neighbor's driveway talking for half an hour and she's decided she's done without her daddy for too long and she's going to be back with me again no matter the fence. She backs off about 100 feet and gets a run at it, and leaps over the wire, usually I hear "Yip!Yip!Yip!" as she hits apogee, then she skids up next to me.

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

So, umm, how come the dog didn't get shocked, too? You did check under her collar, right? (only half joking... how sad is that!)

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

It's a radio collar. The collar is just a radio receiver. That thought keeps occurring to me too until I correct myself.

Radio receivers

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I've heard that you're not supposed to talk on the phone during an electrical storm, because if the house is hit by lightning, the charge could travel through the phone lines and shock the person at this end of the line. So does that mean that it's okay to use a cell phone or wireless phone during a storm? Don't tell my mother, okay, because that's one of my favorite excuses for getting off the phone with her -- uh-oh, sorry Ma, but a t-storm just rolled in -- you don't want me to get shocked, do ya?

Still seems to me that the collar should've received at least some kind of pulse from that strike!

Re: Radio receivers

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose the collar may have gotten a bit of a pulse, but not because its transmitter was hit, just because there was an EMF pulse in the area and it does have an inductor in it. That thing didn't survive a millisecond once struck, there's no way it put out a recognizable signal, and besides, the dog was in the house, about 90 feet from the wire and its field only reaches about 20.

Certainly it's safe to use a cordless or wireless phone in a thunderstorm. But your secret is safe with me.

I'm currently camping on a couple of eBay auctions to get a PetSafe xmit/receive pair, since I don't need the whole kit. I'd rather go to bed but the auctions ends at 10:30 (4 of them, ending 1 minute apart) and it looks like sniping is in order on these.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

So was the dog home when this hit? Would it have hurt the dog?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Yes, but no, it's a radio collar. It has to receive a signal from the transmitter to go off, and this thing pretty quickly stopped making that signal.