The Expanse is being turned into an RPG | 25 Amp Circuit Breaker

The real problem with mains voltages is that somewhere, some day, some bonehead will manage to fry himself – and the media will blame the maker movement for it. I’ve already seen far too many absolute beginners planning to wire up their home appliances to an Arduino as their first project…

So China are stuck before capitalism’s stable period, the West are now past that. China might end up passing through it, or skipping it altogether. Actually the West might end up learning a few tricks from them.

Indeed, I did a HV Course at a functioning power station where once you had isolated an 11kV switchboard you had to grab hold of the bus bars to show the other workers it was safe to carry out their work.

A capacitor stores electricity and is used during the compressor and fan startup for extra power. It also protects the motor from damage due to fluctuating voltage. These capacitors don’t last forever and can go out unexpectedly. If you are comfortable with electrical repairs you can use a screwdriver to discharge the dual start/run capacitor by connecting terminals to short it out, and then replace it with a new one made for the make and model of your A/C. If that’s beyond the level of DIY you’re comfortable tackling, then call a pro.

First, some background. I am a design engineer working on safety of life critical hardware design and technology development for a military application. I noticed this project a while back, and I invested some thought into how I would design the system.

I don’t know about anywhere else, but in North America, power enters the home via two 120V hot and one neutral. The two 120V hot legs are out of phase with each other, and when combined, you get 240V. So, from the breaker panel, you can pull 120V or 240V, depending on the type of breaker you insert at a given position. Some large appliances (water heaters, central AC units, electric stoves, large power tools) are 240V in North America, but most everything else is designed for a single leg 120V feed. Then just to make things even more complicated, large industrial businesses often have three phase 480V for the really big equipment.

We recently had a chat among the Hackaday writers about how we could approach this subject. The easy way out is to be all Elf-and-Safety and join the radioactive anthrax crowd. But the conclusion we came to was that this site is a resource for hackers and makers. Some of you are going to lift the lid on boxes containing significant voltages no matter what, so we thought we’d help you do it safely rather than just listen for the distant screams.

Oh well… That industrial relay has ‘almost’ the same contact ratings of a simple songle srd-05v sl-c relay (specifically the C form/single phase). But I’m sure it won’t last as long as 20y+ in such harsh environment.

If ever there was a right time to change the name, it’s now, as this ground-up, all-new car launches with all the incumbent R&D investment and expectation you might expect for a vehicle that has been benchmarked to beat the class best. So while you might reasonably argue that it would have been more straightforward if the naming U-turn hadn’t been made several months after the car was unveiled as an Auris at this year’s Geneva motor show, the truth is that when Corollas start running down the line in Burnaston, Derbyshire in a few months time, surely only Google will recall it.

Also, when you say “..10A relay will dissipate maximum 2.5W through the 0.1ohm contacts…” also does not seem to be correct: P=R*I^2, so @10A it’s 10W

You need to learn how to read a datasheet and understand the terms – without an understanding it won’t do you any good.

Maybe what should be done is a special 240 outlet be developed and installed in all new construction (1 per garage). Something with safety features like thermal monitoring built into outlet. This would probably cost less than all those annoying ARC fault breakers I am required to have…