Power Line Mystery

Perhaps you could put a voltage meter on the line and see what is happening. A multimeter will do the trick, as will a specialized AC line voltage meter that you can get inexpensively at places like Radio Shack. Finally, if you really want to see this through, call the power company--they have professional meters that they can hook to your line.

I once lived in Duluth, Minnesota, in the downtown area. Everytime the big lift bridge opened, my ancient (but then new) Macintosh would power cycle or crash. UPS's were relatively unknown back then, and as a student, that was out of the question. But it was pretty obvious when the bridge was going to open with all the boat horns and such. I'd simply shutdown, or save often. I did lose a lot of lightbulbs in that apartment.

-john-

"Al" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net...

It is not necessarily the power grid that make the UPS beep. It also may be a message from the UPS for instance to alarm you to replace the batteries. You should find a description in your manual.

petrus bitbyter

Some models will start to beep once in a while to remind the operator that the batteries are weak, and will soon have to be changed. The battery lifespan is about 3 to 4 years on the average.

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Jerry G. ==========================

I imagine that somewhere a big machine on my power grid is turning or or off. It certainly doens't coincide with any electrical events in my house.

Anyone have similar occurances? I may hook up some kind of signal conditioner to my power line and try to capture the glitches. I don't want to buy anything, but would like to build something. Anyone have access to links to schematics for such an instrument?

Al

OK, but why only once a day. You may be out then, like at work, and never get the message. At any rate, the batteries are new.

Al

that

I have a couple that self test once a day. Here's some more info....Paul

You should consult your user guide. From my experience, after a number of years, the batteries start to go down. This is normal. We have a fair number of UPS's where I work. When we start hearing them beep once in a while, it starts to get more frequency over the months. As soon as we hear them doing this, we change the batteries.

The above applies if you know for sure that the power going in is stable. You will eventually know when the batteries are not working any more, because the UPS's (depending on the model) will not start, and during power bumps they will no longer do their protection work.

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Jerry G. GLG Technologies GLG ==========================

OK, but why only once a day. You may be out then, like at work, and never get the message. At any rate, the batteries are new.

Al

OK, I ran the self test and it was OK. Its a UPS Smart 600.

In my lab at work, when the machines in the factory would shut down before quitting time at 4PM, the electrical noise was bad enough on the lines that we could not do some tests. We even experimented with hugh isolation transformers for the lab benches, but NO-GO. We just learned to live with it and avoid start-up and quitting times for critical tests.

Down the street for me is a factory that builds microwave wave guides. Maybe they are the culprits. Its not a problem other than I would like to know the reason for the beeps at ~9:15AM.

I'll have to come up with some kind of recording monitor.

Al

Since it is repeating and predictable, your power might be sagging at the same time every day due to some significant load coming on line (a factory, for example). Since your table light is on a UPS, you might be missing the "brown-out."