Boo Hoo

[peterh]

got back home a week ago after a nice, sunny weekend in Yorkshire to find MVP wouldn't connect. Talking to the neighbours it seems we missed the 'great' storm on Saturday (so dark the street lights came on at 2 pm. I'm now operational again having discovered 'broken' MVP, on-board LAN on office PC, and 4 port switch built in to ADSL router. The only thing unscathed is the wi-fi connection to the GBPVR box. Not all bad then

[Chris.Day]

Sorry to hear that.

Lightning makes me a bit paranoid. HTPC users have a lot of equipment attached to our PCs, much of which is quite expensive. Through the TV tuners you have a path for the lightning to kill whatever equipment you've got attached elsewhere in the house. I'm tempted to go wireless with my HTPC, it's just that in my case wired ethernet is actually tidier, and wireless always seems to be a hassle.

[bgowland]

Yeah - bad news. Nasty stuff, lightning.

The closest I've been to a ground strike was about 10-15 yards - luckily I was in my office but the window was wide open. The air started to crackle about a second before, then, what looked like a bolt of flame shot vertically up from the ground accompanied by a whoosh and the loudest bang I've ever heard.

I was a sysadmin at the time and the server room was right next door. It was I while ago but I think I remember a UPS gave its life to save the servers that were connected to it and a couple of other bits of kit lost their PSUs.

My wife just spotted me posting this an told me that some friends she was visiting this afternoon had a strike to their aerial in the storm here in the SE last Thursday. That took out their digibox. I'm glad I decided to loft-mount my aerial.

Cheers,
Brian

[HtV]

then, what looked like a bolt of flame shot vertically up from the ground accompanied by a whoosh and the loudest bang I've ever heard.

People allways think (me too) that lightning goes from the sky to the ground, it sure looks like it from a distance. But I read/saw once that it in fact goes from the ground up in the air.

[JonnyCam]

Yeah - I saw something about that on discovery - The lightning is a negative charge leading down (because the air inside a storm cloud take the poistive charge to the top of the cloud, leaving only negative on the bottom)

And when it's close enough to earth (or your sat dish) it induces a large positive charge, which shoots up and the +/- charges meet in mid-air completeing the circuit - so yeah, the lightning travels upwards.

But only after inducing 10 million volts to flow up through whatever ground points reacts to the negative charge - frying your electronics. :eek:

Has anyone heard that the surgeguard boxes can actually have electricty arcover 2 sockets if a heavy charge was toflow through them? (someone told me about it - but never been able to verify)

[dgeezer]

I've been zapped twice in the last couple years. Heres my current death toll

2 routers,
1 mvp,
2 onboard lan connections,
1 lan card,
2 fax machines,
1 small tv
1 electric garage door opener

I have put more surge suppresors around the house and office after each strike. However, I really wonder what good they can really do.

Maybe I need lightning rods on the garage???

[peterh]

From what I've seen written about S_y boxes, being connected to PSTN causes more problems, so, I'm guessing that's where the problem started, but it only affected the wired ethernet ports. The ADSL connection and wireless part of the router are OK.

[dgeezer]

Same thing here. Both of the blown routers still have wireless capability but no ehernet. The mvp still powers up and shows the connecting screen on my TV but never connects to my PC.

[daphatty]

A few years back we had a lightning strike about a 1/4 of a mile down the road that hit a power transformer. The explosion was so loud that I instinctively covered my ears when I heard it. I was inside a Starbucks mind you.

[wannabepvr]

I suggest you all stop what ever it is that you are doing that is inciting such wrath from above (or below.) :mad:


- or at least tell us what it is so we can try it…