Electrical Storms

[Andy-831]

Just wondered who actually unplugged stuff these days during thunder storms.

Thursday night's events taught me a lesson 2.30am electric storm knocked the electric off. It was off for about an hour, when it came back on it seemed to come back with an initial surge. Lights, leds etc all glowing 2 or 3 times brighter than normal for about 30 seconds.

I initially thought nothing of it until morning when I tried to access the internet to find the router working but no internet. A quick router swop out showed it was the router at fault, luckily I had a spare router that I set up and got the system back up and running. I opened the router casework to find black charring inside the router at one of the ports. This port happens to be connected to my Innuos Zen. Which has also suffered damage as it will not now turn on. Nothing else connected seems effected.

Feeling a bit fed up

[savvypaul]

Bummer, mate. That is bad luck.

Our supply went off last night. I unplugged the BMU and flicked the off switches on all the connected equipment (or unplugged them from the extension block). I didn't think to do it with my router or Vortexbox, though. Fortunately, they were OK.

[Daniel Quinn]

Just take it as nature prefers analogue

[Andy-831]

Lol nice one DQ

[Andy-831]

Well the Zen came back from Innuos In Portugal with a shiny new motherboard 4megs of Ram and the new Innuos Operating system and is apparently now masquerading as a Zen Mini Mk 2 or 3 who knows or cares it works Lol.

Sounds the same as before irrespective of whether I play it with Orange Squeeze straight through the Dac or as before with a Squeezebox Touch in the mix as the controller. Can't honestly say the new software is any better than the old Vortexbox software, its just different although I have not got onto trying to change album covers or retagging stuff yet which is maybe where the new software will be an improvement.

[Geoff.R.G]

Power circuits are reasonably well protected from lightning strikes but I am not sure how well data systems are protected, it sounds like a problem with a data line from what you report. However, even the best protected systems can be overcome by large induced voltages unless they are screened, which an ethernet isn't so I suspect that was the cause but I couldn't tell you how sufficient voltage got into your network cable.

[Andy-831]

I have 4 close neighbours all of who are served by the pole mounted transformer in the field behind my house. They all had some problem.
Neighbour 1 lost his router
Neighbour 2 who was on holiday and had his electrics turned off lost his phone system
Neighbour 3 lost his router and a TV
I lost my router and the Innuos Zen which was connected to my router

This all suggests to me as a non techie that whatever happened came down the phonelines. The TV may just be a red herring, a coincidence unless it was connected to the router via an Ethernet cable?

Andy

[vrazjigwb]

I’ve had similar experience also - lost a port on the router (more than once) and the ethernet card in the PC. Everything else was OK... I now disconnect the network cables to important/pricey stuff if I know a storm is coming.

[karatestu]

I have lost a router before as well. Pain in the ass for sure. Since then i have always unplugged everything when i know there is a storm.

[Andy-831]

Good advice Lads and something I will be doing in future when electrical storms are predicted.