Remote power management solutions?

Tue Jan 3 10:30:14 PST 2006

Alvin,

I thought UL listing was only required if you wanted to give potential
buyers assurances that your product won't spontaneously combust on them? :)
Ie, for resale/sale purposes.

Rich,

If your USB HD are over heating, then your best bet is to get new chassis
for them. My guess is that one of the following is occuring:
- high speed HD in a low air flow chassis (replace with chassis with good
airflow or slower hd)
- hd never spins down, constantly being accessed(check the sleep/timings on
the hd... replace chassis with better airflow)

The remote-power-off solution works to reset your HD, but you now face data
corruption and premature HD death via excessive heat and power cycling.

Even if you shelled out for the remote power equipment, you'd end up
shelling out for more later to replace the HD or the chassis PSU after they
fail from overheating/power-cycling.

Wing

PS.

Funny story.. I was asked to implement an automated power-cycle loop on a
device to generate a response signal from a remote modem device. The
interval was to power-cycle(RPC power strip used/scripted telnet session)
the modem like once every 15 minutes. Worked like a charm for like 2 weeks.
Then, we stopped getting the signal. Funny. Seems like the device was
malfunctioning. Replaced it. Worked again. 3 days later, it failed. That's
odd. Replaced it with yet another good modem. Died 5 days later. Hmm...
after much ado about how they can't fail because of power-cycles and such, I
changed the interval to something less intensive and the modems stopped
failing... that is, until a few weeks later...

Moral of the story: automated remote power cycling can be great... but can
be expensive in the long run. :)

On 12/31/05, Alvin Oga <alvin at mail.linux-consulting.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Nick Christenson wrote:
>
> > > Has anyone seen anything like this, or built one, or have plans for
> building
> > > one?  I don't mind cobbling something together using an OTS power
> strip, but
> > > I'm trying to avoid spending hundreds of dollars if possible.
>
> you(anybody) can "build one"
>         - use dtmf circuits if you want to dialin with a phone
>         - use embedded tcp/ip ( $25 ) microcontroller for ethernet control
>         - use an SCR to turn on/off the 110v devices .. but it'd
>         be lot cheaper/easier to use 12v control circuits to control
>         the (12v/5v/3.3v) atx power supply
>
> - problem is the required UL approvals when playing with 110v ac
>
> off the shelf ones run $100 - $1000 but averaging $500 or more
>         - less $$ for less controls and less features :-)
>
> c ya
> alvin
>
>

--
Wing Wong
wingedpower at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.baylisa.org/pipermail/baylisa/attachments/20060103/22e60c78/attachment.html>