ELK M1 and Electrical Storms

[wojeda]

Last night I witnessed the biggest electrical storm I have seen in over a decade. Huge consecutive lightning shook the whole house. Microwave, refrigerator, garage openers all reset to factory settings. Brand new LG 55" LED TV HDMI port #1 died. No clue why. Had to move to port #2. Well, in short, nasty stuff!

Now, thank goodness, nothing blew up. The whole house surge suppressor didn't even trip. But the ELK M1, even though it survived as well, the M1KP2 LCD Keypad went crazy. I was still able to arm and disarm just fine, but all the 32 characters where in the extended character set range. Weird! It was like watching The Matrix. Burnett, Red Head...

My guess is some really narly static electricity got in and send everything to heck. But I really don't know. In order to bring the M1KP2 back to life was to turn off the M1 and back on again. Then it was fine again.

Anynone know what could have caused this? More importantly, any way it can be prevented in the future? If there are any ELK engineers here, I'd love to hear their professional opinion on this as well.

 

[gatchel]

Nothing is fool proof but...


You could use more surge protectors on your individual devices or you could also put surge protection on the low voltage wiring to the data bus devices. You could go crazy with protection but the costs could be cost prohibitive.

 

[gatchel]

There are also some good suggestions here:



http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19696&pid=160877&st=0&#entry160877

 

[chedemefedeme]

It's highly likely you were not (or at least not exclusively) impacted by surge on the power grid. Your system probably suffered from induction / magnetic pulse damage. In a nutshell a very nearby lightning strike causes such a burst of energy in the air that induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction) takes place. Simply stated a nearby lightning strike can be so powerful that electrical energy goes through the air and into the wiring connecting your equipment.

You can not protect your system from this using surge protectors in most cases. This is because surge protectors are on the high-voltage side of your equipment. They monitor for sharp spikes in voltage on the mains bringing power to your equipment. Inductive damages on the other hand tend to affect small gauge, low voltage wiring far more than high voltage. This would be your elk data bus, sensor loops, hdmi cables, ethernet cables, etc.

If you suffered a massive surge from the outside of your home (say lightning hit a power pole near your home) your surge protectors would trip and/or you would suffer damage to devices connected to your main electrical power. TV could be fried. Refrigerator would have a burnt out compressor. HVAC may no longer work at your house, etc.

The vast majority of lightning strikes that cause oddities like devices acting strange or isolated damage particularly on the low voltage side of devices are a result of the sheer amount of energy put out through the air by a nearby lighting strike.


Last year my neighborhood had a huge lightning storm. Nothing hit my house and my electricity didn't even go out..but I lost a reed sensor on a window, several ethernet cards in a server, one of my ethernet switches and a few low voltage DC power supplies.

EMP. Ittl screw you up


Edit: Protection methods against inductive/pulse damage from nearby lightning strikes (or nuclear war!) are not well understood at this time. In theory one would shield the potentially damaged equipment via some type of shielding. This is not too effective in practice, though. I have a solid foil radiant barrier in my attic where 90% of my wiring is and I was still hit pretty good.

Grounding your equipment well can allow for this voltage to have a safe place to drain..but there are still devices like your keypads and such that just cant be grounded at their location. The voltage spike from induction is going to affect or damage them.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on protection against inductive/pulse damage from lightning. It's a tough topic and one that consumers really don't understand. You can have a $100 surge protector and it will do crap for you during a strike so near that inductive/pulse damage happens.

 

[wojeda]

Yes. This is exactly what I think happened. I know it did not come via my AC lines. What ever it was, it was induced onto the DC lines. I have been looking ever since for some kind of data line arrestor and all I could find was for CAT5 but even the description for it was too vague.

 

[mustangcoupe]

Great explanation of it chedemefedeme, most people don't understand the EMP/EMI effects of a lightning storm

 

[Del91574]

Yes. This is exactly what I think happened. I know it did not come via my AC lines. What ever it was, it was induced onto the DC lines. I have been looking ever since for some kind of data line arrestor and all I could find was for CAT5 but even the description for it was too vague.

Ditek and Edco make them, primarily used on fire alarm.

 

[gatchel]

I have a solid foil radiant barrier in my attic where 90% of my wiring is and I was still hit pretty good.

It is grounded?