Brand HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Oh, I have such a love-hate relationship with some manufacturers.

Now… I had previously made a vague shitpost while working on a Harris Apex A2X exciter. This would have dated back to, well, when they were Harris Broadcast before the spinoff that left them independent as GatesAir, with another division becoming Imagine Communications

Imagine Communications…. Because they aren’t necessarily ever going to work outside of your vivid imagination

Anyway let’s just get right into YELLING IN BROADCAST ENGINEER. First stop: The Apex M2X oscillator board.

Frequency stability is vital to generating a good solid digital TV broadcast signal. The Apex M2X features a disciplined OCXO (Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator) with several options as to how to ensure proper longterm calibration – it has a GPS receiver, 10 Mhz external reference, and 1 PPS external reference options provided. More on OCXO references here (this describing a more basic, free-running one, without sync inputs). However, the OCXO itself is, uhhhhhhhhhhhh


uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

h.

 

hhhhhhhhhhhhh

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHAT DID YOU DO HERE

WHAT IS THIS

WHAT IS ANY OF THIS

WHY

YOU GUYS JUST GLUED A BLOB OF PACKING FOAM OVER THE OSCILLATOR AND A LINEAR VOLTAGE REGULATOR WHY DID YOU DO THIS

LOOK AT THAT BULGING CAPACITOR OF HAPPINESS ALL UP IN THERE OH BABY

I wanted to peel this crap off but I was fairly confident that if this is anything like the antistatic foam that ICs used to come packed in, it may have broken down and corroded parts under it and I’d be faced with irreplaceable parts that went out of availability two years before they sold this exciter crumbling to dust. So I left it alone. It only has to last about another year, if even that. I hope. Did I mention HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH? Because HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So. Let’s move on to the power side.
The power supply is along the left wall of the exciter. On GatesAir’s admission, the power supply pretty much expires and becomes a ticking time bomb after 5 years – power it off and it will never ever start back up again.

But that’s unrelated to, uhhhhh, The Internal UPS Thing Of WEIRDNESS

For unknown reasons they felt the need to give the unit battery backup. It does not fully power it, like, the RF output disappears once it’s on battery. I think all it does is keep the controller with the RTAC data* in memory alive, and keep it from having to entirely run through the several minutes long boot process following a momentary power glitch.

It is, however, FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

On later versions it uses a lithium ion battery which consists of three 18650 cells, but rated at only 1.5 amp hour, which suggests… some 18650s of hilariously low quality. Behind the board is a charging / BMS circuit that steps the battery voltage up to 12V to keep the exciter powered. On earlier versions, they went through all the trouble of building this elaborate charger/step-up board, similarly…..
And then, waaaait for it—–

 


Ok, take a good look at this, and prepare yourself for the description of what you’re actually looking at: someone… went through the trouble of getting a spot welder in house and welding tabs to unmatched dumpshit tier** Energizer retail packed NiMH cells.

Because, uh, only the finest with Brand HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Picture…….. related.

There is another memory backup battery, but I’m guessing that’s mostly just for the realtime clock.

* Sorry, I am not currently in a sufficiently coherent mental state to describe what RTAC does, other than that it is Fucking Magic and if the Fucking Magic doesn’t work, the signal comes out on air as distorted non-decodable dog turd
** only slightly better than Duracell

Fixing the Thomson transfer switch

Poor thing got stuck in generator position and couldn’t go back on line… the problem only became apparent watching the mechanism cycle.
ignore the fact that I say “short of the limit switch”, it should have been “final position”. whatever. brain cheeze.

The limit switch was getting pressed early, causing the robot arm to stop moving with the breaker juuuust on the edge before actually closing. The reason for this was that the locknut got loose on that screw that activates it and the screw backed out a bit.

I readjusted it and tightened the nut. I then used some of the same nail polish I’m wearing in the video on the threads to keep it from backing out again.

Then I sang to it.

Rock over London, rock on, Princeton. Exxon: Put the tiger in your tank!

MC4 disconnect tool / wrench

image

Trust me, if you work on solar energy systems, you need at least one of these. If you affix mc4 connectors in the field, you need two. The side prongs will effortlessly squeeze the locking tabs on a connector without damage (though you appear to need a different tool for the evil Amphenol ones), and the odd shaped hole will stop the connector from turning as you use the spanner end to tighten the weatherproof packing at the bottom. Yay.

Xantrex sounds like it should be the name of a drug anyway

Xantrex Technologies, now Schneider Electric Renewable Energy, has some of the worst customer service policies and procedures in place that I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. One new development from them is complete and immediate discontinuation of warranty support and service for any product that has been discontinued. Say you just bought a whole wall full of XW6048’s at around $3K each … Well, too bad, if they go out of production tomorrow, they’re totally orphaned and you’re stuck with them, working or not — and I have been seeing major quality fade on their products as of late!!

Their new charge controllers, the XW MPPT 80 600, just look like a hot mess. A demo unit that arrived at work came to us with internal cables unplugged; I can’t be sure if they just didn’t connect them at the factory or if they came loose in shipping. When the sun comes up over your pv array and puts up to 600 volts onto the controller, do you REALLY want to find out there are loose parts rattling around in there? Reeeeally? (DC arcs get really mad.)

OutBack Power has some new 8000 grid interactive watt inverters with split phase output out now. Let us all rid ourselves of the stupid Xantrex XW system. Pleeeeease.

Also, just fyi, 54vdc kinda stings like a mother*?+!er. It feels like a fire ant sting.

pic related.

pic related.