I am an aussie working for a telco in Philipines, and on my weekends, my own project, I distribute interent to a poor community of villages in the remote jungle where my wifes family lives.
I distribute the internet over singel fiber optic drop cables over relatively short distances (anywhere between 100m to 3 km) and use cheap active reverse POE powered fiber optic devices which allow multiple houses within a 100m radius in a village to connet to the said switch by sending their own 48V POE ethernet cables to these cheap circuit board swithches. Apparently, each house supplies power to these things and the chips on the baord are able ot use bits of each hosueholds power to power the device fairly. This design is usedby Mikrotik in a reverse POE powered switch, which is unaffordable to me.
The circuit boards I use do the same thing but are insanley cheap form china, and look like this:
Type one, with 7 reverse 24-48V reverse (power in) POE ports and one POE out port, and 2 x single mode WDM fiber optic transceivers.
Type two, with 3 fiber ports and 2 ethernet ports only one of which is reverse POE.
And a bunch of other variants like that with minor differencess.
They are incredibly cheap, and thats how it needs to be, because these ppl make about 2.50 USD equivalent a day to live their lives.
Nearly every time there is a power outage, one , some or many of my switches at different locations get damaged in some way or another. Orignially I thought the problem had a pattern where after a lightning strike, I would loose connectivity on 1 or 2 of the fiber optic transceivers on the circuit board., but only those fiber ports that were pluged in and being used would fail. So that led me to beleive that the tranceivers were being burned out by overpowered light coming from the source. I figured that the power surge was overpowering the supply source (at my house) and burning out the receiver on the other end, due to the short distance and overpowered cheap china technolgoy. however viewing the trasnceivers with a cellphone camera, which can normally see the 1310nm light wave; after these failures, I could no longer see any light being transmitted from the trasnceiver, so it seems as if somehow a power surge manages to get into the circuitry, and burn out the transmitter part, but only on the fiber ports that had a cable plugged in. This makes no sense to me and i have no idea how that could be possible. How would the electrical surge only harm those ports that has a plastic SC fiber connector plugged in??? it just doesnt make sense. Somehow though, that pattern was 100% reccuring and i am adamant that the electricity was somehow only frying the fiber ports in use.
Fast forward to today, for some reason i keep installing new houses, knowing that its going to fail, ppl are just deseprate for connection to the ouside world, so i continue, and low and behold, a power outage strikes 3 days after i connect this new hosue, and a brand new 900 peso (20 USD) 3 port fiber switch is fried to the point that absolutely nothing on it turns on any more. Just a quick flash of the power LED and then dead. so this is the first time that one of these surges has managed to kill the device to the point it wont turn on..
I've had some other simple fiber devices fail while being powered by 5 - 12 volt power supply packs not only by the revesrse POE method. These are standard media converters and failed in the same manner, no light visible through the phone camera after the failure. Also, some of these power packs were damaged by the events, where the power supply pack has nearly electorcuted me to death after its y cap failed short-circuit and leaked 100% 230V through to the dc jack that plugs in to the device. this has happend to abotu 3 of my 50 purchased units. SO ive had to start instalign them in plastic boxes so that residents cant touch them if they failin such a dangerous way..
I intend to not jstu throw money at the problem. IM hoping someone here can guide me to decide hwo i can investigate whether the issues a re transient quick major surges from the lightning, or from the current rush on resumption of power after an outage.
Whichever it is, i am going to need to do some insane amount of engineering to fix the issue, because none of the hosues involved have any kind of earth pin on their power sockets! So if i need to buy frikn SPDs for every install, its going to have to be some kind of plug in 230V SPD with an auxilliary each connecton for a random hack job. Terrible. I cant start doing electrical works and rewiring their houses to install din rail SPDs, onto their bamboo distribtuion boards, to not fry my gear that i install practically for free for them. IT takes about 2 months of servcie revenue from the customer to pay back the instalation costs, I keep it affordable and use my international connections tobring the world to them, im that kind of guy. So in short, i cant be looking at automaticservo voltage regulators or UPSs for these ppl, they are dirt poor. whatever solution i come up with, it needs to be correct and well investigated. and i just dont know how. i do internet, not electrical fault analysis. hehe
Anyone that can help, all i can promise is good photos of happy people as a result!
I distribute the internet over singel fiber optic drop cables over relatively short distances (anywhere between 100m to 3 km) and use cheap active reverse POE powered fiber optic devices which allow multiple houses within a 100m radius in a village to connet to the said switch by sending their own 48V POE ethernet cables to these cheap circuit board swithches. Apparently, each house supplies power to these things and the chips on the baord are able ot use bits of each hosueholds power to power the device fairly. This design is usedby Mikrotik in a reverse POE powered switch, which is unaffordable to me.
The circuit boards I use do the same thing but are insanley cheap form china, and look like this:
Type one, with 7 reverse 24-48V reverse (power in) POE ports and one POE out port, and 2 x single mode WDM fiber optic transceivers.
Type two, with 3 fiber ports and 2 ethernet ports only one of which is reverse POE.
And a bunch of other variants like that with minor differencess.
They are incredibly cheap, and thats how it needs to be, because these ppl make about 2.50 USD equivalent a day to live their lives.
Nearly every time there is a power outage, one , some or many of my switches at different locations get damaged in some way or another. Orignially I thought the problem had a pattern where after a lightning strike, I would loose connectivity on 1 or 2 of the fiber optic transceivers on the circuit board., but only those fiber ports that were pluged in and being used would fail. So that led me to beleive that the tranceivers were being burned out by overpowered light coming from the source. I figured that the power surge was overpowering the supply source (at my house) and burning out the receiver on the other end, due to the short distance and overpowered cheap china technolgoy. however viewing the trasnceivers with a cellphone camera, which can normally see the 1310nm light wave; after these failures, I could no longer see any light being transmitted from the trasnceiver, so it seems as if somehow a power surge manages to get into the circuitry, and burn out the transmitter part, but only on the fiber ports that had a cable plugged in. This makes no sense to me and i have no idea how that could be possible. How would the electrical surge only harm those ports that has a plastic SC fiber connector plugged in??? it just doesnt make sense. Somehow though, that pattern was 100% reccuring and i am adamant that the electricity was somehow only frying the fiber ports in use.
Fast forward to today, for some reason i keep installing new houses, knowing that its going to fail, ppl are just deseprate for connection to the ouside world, so i continue, and low and behold, a power outage strikes 3 days after i connect this new hosue, and a brand new 900 peso (20 USD) 3 port fiber switch is fried to the point that absolutely nothing on it turns on any more. Just a quick flash of the power LED and then dead. so this is the first time that one of these surges has managed to kill the device to the point it wont turn on..
I've had some other simple fiber devices fail while being powered by 5 - 12 volt power supply packs not only by the revesrse POE method. These are standard media converters and failed in the same manner, no light visible through the phone camera after the failure. Also, some of these power packs were damaged by the events, where the power supply pack has nearly electorcuted me to death after its y cap failed short-circuit and leaked 100% 230V through to the dc jack that plugs in to the device. this has happend to abotu 3 of my 50 purchased units. SO ive had to start instalign them in plastic boxes so that residents cant touch them if they failin such a dangerous way..
I intend to not jstu throw money at the problem. IM hoping someone here can guide me to decide hwo i can investigate whether the issues a re transient quick major surges from the lightning, or from the current rush on resumption of power after an outage.
Whichever it is, i am going to need to do some insane amount of engineering to fix the issue, because none of the hosues involved have any kind of earth pin on their power sockets! So if i need to buy frikn SPDs for every install, its going to have to be some kind of plug in 230V SPD with an auxilliary each connecton for a random hack job. Terrible. I cant start doing electrical works and rewiring their houses to install din rail SPDs, onto their bamboo distribtuion boards, to not fry my gear that i install practically for free for them. IT takes about 2 months of servcie revenue from the customer to pay back the instalation costs, I keep it affordable and use my international connections tobring the world to them, im that kind of guy. So in short, i cant be looking at automaticservo voltage regulators or UPSs for these ppl, they are dirt poor. whatever solution i come up with, it needs to be correct and well investigated. and i just dont know how. i do internet, not electrical fault analysis. hehe
Anyone that can help, all i can promise is good photos of happy people as a result!
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