Wednesday, June 11, 2008

HD UPS Problems

I've been fighting a problem with my APC UPS that I have in front of my HD setup. It's a BE350R.

When I went HD, I bought a new BE350R just for it. It ran fine for several months then one night the lights blinked and the whole HD setup dropped power. Bummer.

I reset it and it did it again. I just plugged everything into a power strip and went on.

Today I had time to work on it so I went on the APC site and they had a nice real-time chat feature. They walked me through testing the battery and it was fine. As I replayed the symptoms to the agent, he said that they indicated that the UPS was overloaded. The BE350R supports 200W. Actually the agent, Arun, was very good.

Plugged into it I had the Sony KDL52W3000, the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR, the Hauppauge MediaMVP 01000, and the Vantec enclosure with the 750GB drive from the Seagate FreeAgent Pro.

Remember, I'm a mechanical engineer, not an electrical engineer!

So tonight I struck out finding the power requirements of this equipment. It didn't take long to discover my problem. The Sony draws 295W!

I'll just plug the Sony into the surge suppressor side of the BE350R and I should be fine.

1 comment:

Wayne Carter said...

I know the feeling. I had a long chat with my company's helpdesk this week troublshooting a PCAnywhere connectivity issue. After about two hours, Matt, asked me to try replacing the 25' extension to the phone line with a new one. I did...connectivity issue resolved. Sometimes, solutions are too simple...:o)