Good day,

I'm designing a circuit that can be added to a computer's input power line that monitors and detects if there is an ESD events or a ground reference surge on the 28V 10 Amp DC power being fed to the computer. I'm looking for ideas on how to accomplish this in a fairly simple and robust fashion any help would be greatly appreciated.

Chris

 

First question is may be obtuse
why ?
the reason I ask is

is this a one off test,
or is it to go into production
what do you want to do with the output of the circuit ? log it or say flash a led
obviously you cant store it to the PC your monitoring, as its liable to be at some point or other "out of service"

do you want to log time event happend,
do you want to measure amplitude ?

what tolerance on the event do you want , so is 5% over standard an event
is an event above a certain width to trigger, or not ?

 

Check out Hall effect current sensors -probably the safest way to detect the pulse, if you can find a fast enough detector. Otherwise you are stuck with making a current transformer and something like a diode detector. ESD events can have risetimes of less than a nanosecond so be prepared to adjust your expectations.

What is your objective? (or as andrewmm asks, "Why"?) Knowing that might get you a more detailed answer.