|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 8, 2013 15:04:18 GMT
Nice, hidden, unpluggable wall warts wasting power 24/7! Also I have a 12V Bus in my E-Lab with 12V sockets and have installed some in the kitchen, some in the living room and one for the telephone. I use them to plug in devices which need 12V or use a car USB adaptor... Got to love German efficiency! So instead of having a bunch of small wall-warts leaching power, you've consolidated them and have one big one leaching power 24/7.  The reason I went with the combo-plug was because the wall-warts kept walking off through the day when I wasn't charging my phone. It's worth paying a few cents a month to not have to waste so much time trying to find where the chargers ran off to. This outlet is in a very convenient location and I suspect other family members, who I will not name, would want to use it so they would un-plug the changers. Why they felt it necessary to then hide them under sofa cushions, in flower pots and even in the refrigerator is beyond me. Maybe they thought the lost TV remotes were getting lonely. |
|
|
|
Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Mar 8, 2013 15:09:56 GMT
RCA makes a nice plug-in (no installation/rewiring needed) combination outlet/wall-wart plate.  |
|
|
|
Post by the light works on Mar 8, 2013 15:24:00 GMT
Nice, hidden, unpluggable wall warts wasting power 24/7! Also I have a 12V Bus in my E-Lab with 12V sockets and have installed some in the kitchen, some in the living room and one for the telephone. I use them to plug in devices which need 12V or use a car USB adaptor... Got to love German efficiency! So instead of having a bunch of small wall-warts leaching power, you've consolidated them and have one big one leaching power 24/7. The reason I went with the combo-plug was because the wall-warts kept walking off through the day when I wasn't charging my phone. It's worth paying a few cents a month to not have to waste so much time trying to find where the chargers ran off to. This outlet is in a very convenient location and I suspect other family members, who I will not name, would want to use it so they would un-plug the changers. Why they felt it necessary to then hide them under sofa cushions, in flower pots and even in the refrigerator is beyond me. Maybe they thought the lost TV remotes were getting lonely. a FEW cents? how much are they gouging you for electricity up there? I'd expect a transformer as small as a USB charger to waste no more than a fraction of a cent a month. |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 8, 2013 15:29:06 GMT
Got to love German efficiency! So instead of having a bunch of small wall-warts leaching power, you've consolidated them and have one big one leaching power 24/7. True, there's an enormous rotary current transformer feeding the battery but the result is extra smooth DC. Also there is a voltage dependant circuit cutting the power to the transformer when the batteries are full. The transformer is rarely online and I can keep it shut down in case I really need plain DC. |
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 8, 2013 16:00:49 GMT
a FEW cents? how much are they gouging you for electricity up there? I'd expect a transformer as small as a USB charger to waste no more than a fraction of a cent a month. I actually figured that out once. I think it came to something like 19 cents a year for the newer style wall-warts that use a chopper type supply. It was a little higher than I expected but still worth it not to have to keep unplugging and losing them. I just look at it as another "convenience charge." My actual electric rate runs around 8 cents per kWh. That's before all the extra add-ons such as customer charges, infrastructure upgrades (smart meters) and taxes. |
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 8, 2013 16:07:42 GMT
Got to love German efficiency! So instead of having a bunch of small wall-warts leaching power, you've consolidated them and have one big one leaching power 24/7. True, there's an enormous rotary current transformer feeding the battery but the result is extra smooth DC. Also there is a voltage dependant circuit cutting the power to the transformer when the batteries are full. The transformer is rarely online and I can keep it shut down in case I really need plain DC. Well, I like the battery back-up idea. |
|
|
|
Post by the light works on Mar 8, 2013 16:34:57 GMT
True, there's an enormous rotary current transformer feeding the battery but the result is extra smooth DC. Also there is a voltage dependant circuit cutting the power to the transformer when the batteries are full. The transformer is rarely online and I can keep it shut down in case I really need plain DC. Well, I like the battery back-up idea. I pull a string to activate my back up power supply - only because I am too stingy to replace the start battery. |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 8, 2013 21:56:50 GMT
True, there's an enormous rotary current transformer feeding the battery but the result is extra smooth DC. Also there is a voltage dependant circuit cutting the power to the transformer when the batteries are full. The transformer is rarely online and I can keep it shut down in case I really need plain DC. Well, I like the battery back-up idea. Well, the battery is less for backup purposes, it just keeps the voltage steady and smooth. Just like in the old telephone system. In Germany, each branch exchange had a HUGE battery room to make noiseless DC. It also ran the branch exchange for days during a power outage. Nowadays it takes just an hour or two until the telephones quit working when there is no power. In the C64 Adventure "Zak McKracken", the whole idea of the game was that the annoying humming noise on the US phones was a machine that makes all phone user dumb. So your branch exchanges didn't had batteries? |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 8, 2013 21:59:48 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 8, 2013 22:11:42 GMT
No, our phone exchanges have always had back-up batteries. And BIG ones. At an exchange office not from from where I use to live, one of the main battery buses got shorted. It was a brick building and the batteries were in the basement. There was no way for the firemen to get down there and wasn't too much they could do if they did. The place burned for a whole day and knocked out phone service over a large area since many DX trunk lines and fiber optics were routed through that exchange. It took months to fully restore phone service to some areas. articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-05-10/news/8803150844_1_new-exchange-telephone-exchange-switching |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 8, 2013 22:20:10 GMT
No, our phone exchanges have always had back-up batteries. And BIG ones. At an exchange office not from from where I use to live, one of the main battery buses got shorted. It was a brick building and the batteries were in the basement. There was no way for the firemen to get down there and wasn't too much they could do if they did. The place burned for a whole day and knocked out phone service over a large area since many DX trunk lines and fiber optics were routed through that exchange. It took months to fully restore phone service to some areas. articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-05-10/news/8803150844_1_new-exchange-telephone-exchange-switchingI don't mean huge batteries as backups, i mean GIANT batteries and coils as smoothing choke to generate noiseless DC on the phone system. |
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 8, 2013 22:30:09 GMT
I don't mean huge batteries as backups, i mean GIANT batteries and coils as smoothing choke to generate noiseless DC on the phone system. Well, the batteries serve both purposes. I've never heard any 60Hz buzz on our phone system except where a line gets grounded by being submerged in flood water. Years ago, when most of the switching was done by relays, you sometimes got some very strange noises on the phone lines. It wasn't hum but more clicking and banging, with an occasional "thunk". Almost like someone left a mic open in the switching office. For C64 (or anyone else that may be interested) Below is a link to the early U.S. Bell system technical journals. These go back to 1922. In reading them, it always amazes me at how creative these early pioneers of telephony were. Makes for good winter reading  I think I may have emailed you a link to these once before but it has changed. www3.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/ |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 9, 2013 11:09:52 GMT
I don't mean huge batteries as backups, i mean GIANT batteries and coils as smoothing choke to generate noiseless DC on the phone system. Well, the batteries serve both purposes. I've never heard any 60Hz buzz on our phone system except where a line gets grounded by being submerged in flood water. Years ago, when most of the switching was done by relays, you sometimes got some very strange noises on the phone lines. It wasn't hum but more clicking and banging, with an occasional "thunk". Almost like someone left a mic open in the switching office. For C64 (or anyone else that may be interested) Below is a link to the early U.S. Bell system technical journals. These go back to 1922. In reading them, it always amazes me at how creative these early pioneers of telephony were. Makes for good winter reading I think I may have emailed you a link to these once before but it has changed. www3.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/Thanks again for the link. The term "debugging" comes from the telephone system. When something went wrong, someone had to open a distributor box and those were usually full of insects. They are open on their bottom to let moisture out. Spiders love to breed in those boxes since they are a nice, dry shelter. I've never opened an old telephone distributor without the need to wipe spider nests and insects away in order to work on it. So first thing the maintenance crew needs to do is to debug the distributor box. The consumer thought that the weird noises you can hear on a bad line come from bugs gnawing on the wires, maybe because they heard the technicians talk about debugging the distributor box in order to fix the line. The first computer bug, a bug stuck in a relay of a computer was recorded as “First actual case of bug being found.” Just because they used the term "bug" for weird connection errors as used for the telephone systems for decades. And this was the first real bug bug. |
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 12, 2013 19:16:05 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 12, 2013 19:27:10 GMT
Wow. And now the phone company can even do it without the wires. |
|
|
|
Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Mar 12, 2013 20:25:01 GMT
I'm surprised that the Zip-Open Tummy Diet hasn't become more popular!
|
|
|
|
Post by GTCGreg on Mar 12, 2013 20:36:36 GMT
I'm surprised that the Zip-Open Tummy Diet hasn't become more popular! well, they do have a zip closed one. They staple shut your stomach so food bypasses it. You don't completely digest the food, so you don't gain weight. Wonder if the "residue" is re-useable?  |
|
|
|
Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Mar 12, 2013 20:39:42 GMT
I'm surprised that the Zip-Open Tummy Diet hasn't become more popular! well, they do have a zip closed one. They staple shut your stomach so food bypasses it. You don't completely digest the food, so you don't gain weight. Wonder if the "residue" is re-useable? Would that qualify as ABC* food? *Already Been Chewed |
|
|
|
Post by silverdragon on Mar 13, 2013 8:56:13 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by c64 on Mar 13, 2013 12:06:09 GMT
I use a Belkin Powered USB hub as the charging point.... Rememer the time when USB was relative new and they advertised power supply less scanners you just plug into your PC or Laptop without the need of a wall wart? 90% of the customers had bought one, couldn't make it work and called the hotline to learn that you either need to plug in the scanner as the only USB device or you need to use a powered USB hub. Wasn't that a great concept? You need to buy and plug in a wallwart Hub just to power your wallwartless scanner? |
|
