[pianotech] Dampp-chaser improvement

[Roger Wheelock]

Hello Mark,

I may have been the one you spoke to about this.  Yes, we did make a "Power 
Off Alarm".  The power cord for our system plugged into this small box, 
which plugged directly into the wall outlet.  If either the system plug or 
the box was detached, an alarm would sound.  And yes, there was no interest 
in this unit at the time.  Of course this was before the turn of the 
century.  grin.

I continued the quest and have periodically looked for an off-the shelf unit 
to do the same thing.  I did find one that was meant to go with in-home 
medical equipment, designed to alert someone in the house if the sick person 
were to come unplugged from some critical device.  I bought a sample and 
plugged it in.  It immediately shorted out giving off that smell of fried 
electronics.  That stopped my investigation.  However, I am going to do 
another internet search and see if anything new is out there.  If anyone 
else on the list has seen anything, please let me know at 
roger at dampp-chaser.com.

Redesigning our product has significant front-end costs associated with 
getting electrical safety approvals from Underwriters Laboratory, the 
Canadian Standards Association, and other international electrical safety 
organizations such as Nemko.  For a small business these procedures can be 
time consuming and costly.  Thus we tend to collect a number of good ideas 
from technicians over a period of time and roll them all into a single 
upgrade of our product line.  Our last major upgrade was in 2006 so we are 
starting to think about something new.

All the best,

Roger

Roger Wheelock, VP
Dampp-Chaser Corp.
ISO 9001:2008 Certified

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Dierauf" <pianotech at nhpianos.com>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 6:48 PM
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Dampp-chaser improvement


>I asked somebody at Dampp-Chaser once about the possibility of adding an 
>audible alarm to indicate a system unplugged status and was told that they 
>had actually made such an option at one time but it was discontinued due to 
>a total lack of interest. Maybe the idea was ahead of its time! The 
>intermittent, persistently annoying buzz or beep would be really useful in 
>some situations.
>
> - Mark
>
> Thomas Cole wrote:
>> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">Ryan --
>>
>> Go to Ron Nossaman's post of 5/1/10 9:02 PM for an idea that would be 
>> very effective in many situations. I say many because there would be 
>> situations, such as if the power is out or there is a legitimate need to 
>> unplug, and a constant buzzing sound (battery powered) would be an 
>> annoyance. It would be nice to switch it to an occasional smoke alarm 
>> style beep for when disconnection is unavoidable.
>>
>> Tom Cole
>>
>> Ryan Sowers wrote:
>>> Hi list!
>>>
>>> I thought I would post this idea here, since I know that Dampp-chaser 
>>> occasionally pipes in on these discussions.
>>> One of the biggest problems of DC systems is that they occasionally get 
>>> left unplugged.
>>
>> </div>
>
>