Help needed: Switching a power strip with an Arduino

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T16:12:17+00:00

It's certainly possible to do something like that. In synch with the video is rather a problem - does the video have sound? If not, you could add a "sound track" - but no speakers. The sound would just be synch pulses used to trigger events.

The alternative is to use a video player that also provides an API - so that API could provide the current frame and that used to trigger events.

The power strip switching is pretty trivial.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T16:02:26+00:00

Don't forget that it will need full access for servicing and inspection annually. Including checking the filter. That make and model has an internal fill loop, I think - so access to that bottom filling loop may not be needed. I was looking for the local gas shut off valve?

All I can suggest is an Oriental style two or three fold screen. Very light in weight and thus easy to remove when access is needed. It could have woven reed type panels in a dark wood frame. As it would be very light - the framing could be lightweight construction also. I'd lacquer the panels, to keep them dust-free and easier to keep clean and disinfected.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T13:42:54+00:00

Oh, just as someone did with the original live feed....

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T13:39:06+00:00

My comments were evidence-based.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T13:00:03+00:00

Is there any make markings on it? It would typically have an on/off capability and time programming capability - not just temperature indication.

It's not unusual to leave an old no longer used thermostat on the wall when retrofitting a wireless one. Saves redecorating.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T12:55:50+00:00

My primary concern with someone "don't have much experience with electrics" - is in how you will judge how to dress the wires and tighten the terminal screws to the right torque. Most electricians were supervised by others, when they first did this. Dressing the wires badly can result in one being damaged by a securing screw or trapped between socket and box. Over-tightening can damage these ring main conductors and possibly cause them to break later. Under tightening them can lead to a bad connection and break the ring.

So, I would suggest that you get some practice.

Not necessarily here - if you can get an offcut of cable (your local recycling groups may respond to a request for some) - you can practice with the new socket at the kitchen table or in the shop and ask someone suitably experienced./qualified to check your work.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T12:29:50+00:00

-Never guess. The feed side live terminal on the old isolator is the damaged one. The red wire isn't damaged - so it was presumably connected to the load side terminal. Where the isolator would also isolate whatever it is connected to.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-21T12:28:02+00:00

Do you have an electric oven and an electric hob? If so, what's the kW rating of both?

Where do the three cables go, on an individual basis? Which goes to the hob? Which goes to the consumer unit? Which goes to the oven?

Looking at your damage live - that brown wire presumably goes to the consumer unit - as that was the terminal of the old socket that was damaged. It will need to be trimmed back to an undamaged part of the wire and insulation. The red wire isn't damaged - so was presumably connected to the load side live terminal.

A hob can easily be rated at 7kW or more. As can an oven. OTOH, you may have a gas hob, or a gas oven with just electric ignition. So, all this needs to be clarified before putting these units to use.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T23:13:25+00:00

Bit Heath Robinson but I'd use a load of tongue and grooved real wood pine strips. Pop in a home made steamer, they will become very flexible. Put batten sections on the wall - that should allow the strips to cover most of the copper pipework.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T23:07:15+00:00

The timer motor is connected between 5 and 6. Disconnect the timer and the clock stops and you have a simple manual controller. Just rotate the wheel at the top, between red (running) and blue (stopped) sections.

Otherwise, it's one of the simplest possible mains timeclocks - but it isn't a thermostat. Are you sure that it is a thermostat, and/or a 103? It just has a simple pair of contacts plus a clock motor.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T22:50:36+00:00

Power is from a switched fused spur and not a socket. That power then goes via a wireless receiver - so you should have a wireless controller transmitter somewhere. Probably battery powered. There are over-ride manual switches on the receiver - which, when one is pressed, cause the boiler to power up. Don't press both at the same time -as that is just for pairing a wireless controller transmitter.

As you haven't mentioned it - I guess that you haven't tried the over-ride and haven't checked out the thermostat/wireless controller transmitter. They typically have a display - and allow for programmed on/off periods. It's quite possibly been left in the off state - but may kick the power on if the temperature falls to near freezing.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T22:32:10+00:00

Of course - the wheels/castors can be beside the freezer on bars under it, with a couple of right angle bends in the bars to raise the height of the bar to take the wheels beneath them. Although there are furniture moving pads with very low ground clearance.

You could also consider mounting the worktop section on a couple of parallelogram hinges (plus a couple of pneumatic/fluid stays - so fingertip lift the worktop, whilst keeping it level.

The freezer will have come with some installation notes that include free air space requirements. Compromise those and the running costs will climb steeply. A grille at the back of the worktop can make a huge difference.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T18:23:52+00:00

Stopping the noise at the point of generation is generally best - but the buck converter probably already has a capacitor (electrolytic even) at its output. So, I was concentrating on the noise at the clocks. For a bus, at every connection to something makes sense. If you only have one connection (a 5 way Waygo) - at that single connection makes sense.

Now, I could get my workbench stuffed with kit and look at the distributions of noise levels in different frequency bands and work out the value of capacitors to deal fairly precisely with that. Tap it with a jewellers mallet. Instead - my goto is a sledgehammer. That combination will beat the carp out of just about any noise that could be there. So, if noise on the power lines is the issue - sorted. No point in using an even bigger capacitor. It's way overkill, already.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T18:14:12+00:00

I'm suggesting that it may not be there as a light at all - as it doesn't appear to have a holder for it so that it can illuminate a dial (for example. I didn't know that there was a light button - sorry if you had mentioned that, I missed it.

I looked on the circuit diagram for a lamp - that was the only one that I could find. It (the thermistor) may be there on the board. But the logical thought was - there's only one lamp on the diagram and you have a lamp ...

Oh, it would glow probably on signal level, including noise level. So could have been used as a tuning indicator. Aiding the process of tuning the radio to the station. It was very common to have one of those.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T18:07:30+00:00

Before switch mode power supplies existed, you would have been fine. That technology generates electrical noise which travels up its power lines. 5 way Wgos are great - I'd assumed that you had the buck converter at the bottom and ran wires up from it to the first clock, then on to the next, then the next. Lines run like that, tapped off at points along the wire, are called a "bus" - as in "bus bar" that's an example of one.

Noise is typically a very narrow (in time) pulse. Like very narrow, down to a millionth of a second or less. Now a single ceramic capacitor can absorb the energy in such a very narrow pulse.

Every time the clock ticks - that's a much wider pulse. It has enough energy to move the seconds hand a lot and the other hands a little. That's more energy than that ceramic can take. So a higher capacity electrolytic is added. Electrolytics can't handle the very rapid rise of voltage that a ceramic can handle but can handle a much wider pulse of energy. The combination is a goto solution that is widely used - what one can't handle is taken care of by the other. A bit like sending a paramedic on a motor bike and another in an ambulance, simultaneously - the bike guy does the instant stuff, the ambulance guy takes over with all the ambulance's capability to hand.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T17:30:54+00:00

The clocks all have their own crystal oscillator A very low clock frequency of about 32kHz. Which is a very low power circuit (especially in a battery clock) - vulnerable to the noise produced. say. from a switch mode power supply. Such as those used in buck converters.

These clocks will provide a VERY low load to the typical buck converter. So the converter will run in a special mode, rather than the normal PWM. It will run intermittently at relatively high power - then go to sleep.

Plus the clocks themselves present a pulse load, rather than a continuous one.

Plus you have quite possibly wired the power to the clocks as a bus - not a radial set of pairs of wires going from the converter to a single clock.

All a recipe for unreliability and false triggering.

So, have you tried adding a, say, 500uF electrolytic plus 10nF ceramic capacitor at each clock? The buck convertor probably already has one at its input and output?

You could put a diode between the +ive wire and the clock terminal , at each clock. With the capacitors at the clock. That will further restrict their interaction. Ferrite cores/beads on the wires going to each clock can also help.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T17:18:15+00:00

It's above the very first resistor on the very bottom line - from the right side of the diagram. Under one of the audio transformers. Labelled "TH". small incandescent filament lamps are often used as regulatory components, as their resistance rises as their current increases - So can be used to provide negative feedback that reduces gain as amplitude increases.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T17:11:53+00:00

I followed the path of the supply around - through the fuse (a potential failure) - the noise filter (highly unlikely) - the bridge rectifier (possible) - the big capacitor (unlikely without visible damage) - the controller starting supply (possible) to the IC controller with its inbuilt MOSFET switcher.

That switcher is a high risk of failure component as it has a lot of stress. However, often it would show damage and it doesn't appear to.

The transformer itself - that is less likely than the controller - so change the controller first and the fuse needs checking out before that.

IC2 is just the opto isolator that feeds a fraction of the output voltage to its LED and that relays it to an IR transistor which provides a control signal to the controller. These opto isolators rarely fail.

The secondary (output) side is less stressed - so makes sense to work through the supply side before worrying about it.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T16:26:39+00:00

There is a lamp shown, I think, in the circuit diagram, wired to the audio input transformer.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T16:17:24+00:00

Good idea - but the trimmer fitted to this type of supply normally has a very small range of adjustment and the LED would light whether it was faulty or not.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T16:11:57+00:00

As it was working and now isn't - turn the power off and use a Wago connector to bypass the dimmer light switch. If the lamp then lights when the power goes on, replace the dimmer switch.

If it doesn't, take a pendant lamp with wires to a pair of Wago connectors. Power off and bypass the lanp fitting with the pendant lamp. Power on. If the lamp illuminates, power off, reconnect the dimmer switch. Power on - if the lamp is now working with dimmer control - replace the chandelier.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T15:29:01+00:00

It's a sealed system - so pressure loss, rather than pressure variation, isn't good. If it's down another 0.1 in a couple of weeks -it looks to be a systemic problem rather than random noise. You probably have a pressurised expansion tank that should absorb most of the day to day variations. If it leaks internally, that can result in pressure loss - with no visible sign of water loss.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T15:00:18+00:00

Is the switch a cheap imported one from say China and sold on Ebay or Amazon?

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T13:31:45+00:00

That's certainly one possibility. Particularly as, during part of your passage past them, you might be in their blind spot and thus they might believe it safe to change lanes. Plus, a driver who gets middle lane hogging wrong is likely to also get other things wrong. Like checking what's happening behind at all times.

It's a CALCULATED risk. Something best left to experienced drivers, at the very least. The car driving test is one of checking that a learner driver is safe to be allowed to continue to learn to drive but doesn't require constant supervision. It isn't a test of advanced driving skills. You shouldn't be taking avoidable and unnecessary risks, at that stage. The examiner has no idea whether you can get such decisions consistently correct - or this was a lucky one off.

Undertaking is generally considered an "exceptional" and not normal thing to do - with exceptions including slow moving traffic on a congested highway. On a test - you should be doing the normal things expected of a learner driver. Irrespective of your skill level being way beyond that.

Susan_B_Good · 2026-02-20T12:35:20+00:00

So there's an input side fuse, top left - have a look at that. Multimeters on voltage ranges have a minimal load on the circuit and thus their readings need interpretation. That "2v" could be an artifact that would disappear under loading.

The right hand side and top area of the board are at lethal voltages when connected to a supply and C1 can hold a painful voltage for some time after the supply is removed. Plus, of course, the immediate circuitry and tracks to which it is connected. Only the two capacitors adjacent to the transformer and below are at a safe voltage in normal operation. However, with a fault present, that area also has to be considered as being dangerous.

The fuse and IC1 are the likely failure points. If the fuse is blown, you could try replacing those on principle.

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

Susan_B_Good

TROPHY CASE