Hi, it's a random bunker slash dumpster item I Found this one in the previous that monster dumpster thing I Found off-site So I'll link in that video at the end of Down Below if you haven't seen it. and I have no idea what this is, but it looked interesting and of course I Love these! thumb wheel switches are always fantastic. If you ever see one of those on a bit of kit, make sure you salvage them. They're great for the junk bin for various projects.

It's got some dip switches and Zel we got never heard of them. It's some sort of receiver test unit so it's not a receiver. presumably it transmits to a receiver and tests out receivers. We've got a power switch FS out full scale out I guess a deck a bit.

what the heck is a deck of it and K22 I Have no idea we can set a level tremor active a transmit that's a momentary action switch so that'll be like a It's like transmits a pulse of various frequencies. and there's the list of frequencies on the back here. So anywhere from 167 Hertz all the way up to 2 kilohertz. there you just set the dip switch.

but the back here is really kinda gives the game away. I think anyway. I'm not sure why it's just gotten a regular mains power cord that doesn't have the insulation. so this is like really old school before the regulations that we had to put the insulation on the pins anyway and for some reason it goes through a neutral thing.

but I think that's they're just like using that as a like a grommet entry. but I guess they had some other purpose for at some stage. But anyway, we've got two different fuses on here and we've got shrouded 4 millimeter active and are in which it be aren't returned neutral I'd be guessing. so given that this thing transmits like lowish frequency stuff and we've got mains in and it looks like mains out with some fuses I'd say this is designed for injecting those control signals on to control frequencies, control signals, control data, whatever it is on to our mains lines which actually controls various appliances and stuff like that.

Now this might be very different in other countries I've got no idea please Living in the comments down below for your particular country and what it's like, but here in Australia we have what's called I'm off-peak electricity and which means that particularly for hot water like the real high energy intensity stuff in everyone's home. If you've got an electric hot water system then if you have those coming on during the day, that's when you're paying like peak prices for electricity. So what they do is they are superimpose a signal onto the 50 Hertz mains now that 60 Hertz rubbish here in strata And then then a signal activates some detection circuitry inside your fuse box which then either turns on or off your hot water system at during like off-peak times it might be after midnight. For example when it's really cheap.

So not only does that lower the grid load during peak times, you know we know that during the day, businesses and everything's going and all that. So the stuff they've got it like to balance the load out midnight not not. Not much is happening. so that's when you want to sort of like load up the grid with people's electric hot water during the night time.

so they can control that. They can control other things like street lights and other in mains type infrastructure and it's not uncommon for these mains control frequencies to actually upset some particular products because they've got you know little modulated high-frequency signals on there and it can cause you know things, lights to flicker and other you know things to happen in products if they're not well designed and well fielded and stuff like that anyway that is my guess what this thing does so we won't turn it on, we'll take it apart and see if my suspicion is correct because I think that's unless it's some sort of like you know, some other custom industrial thing I Think that's what it's going to be doing I don't know who in them it is anyway. 0 Number hundred and Twenty-nine G's didn't make many anyway it's in a classic Pack Tech project case. like there's tons of products are made into.

Pack Tech was like a brand back in the 70s 80s 80s. I think these were popular. These pack Tech cases. you can still buy them I'm so I just call them that.

that's just a generic brand anyway. and I'm undoing a Phillips screw with a flathead screwdriver. Sue me. Anyway, let's crack it open is that? Come on and we're in like Flynn Check it out! Wow, that's not old-school through-hole stuff.

But um, yeah. alright, let's see what's going on here. Ok, first things first: I Got an EEPROM here 1991 vintage. So there you go.

It's not new so that's 30 years old now. almost crikey. No. I have a look.

what though all that bundled up cable is later. But let's follow the money here. And okay, so we've got mains input. Let's follow the money.

Heat shrunk, that's going over Oh Oh Check it out. that's going over to a C and K toggle switch. That's the power switch on the front. C and K toggle switch.

Those things are are 250 volt mains rated. but yeah, it's pretty how you're doing because if you get soldered eggs on there, they can get very close to the metal over here. So this front panel I don't think it's earth at all. So yeah, not the best old-school bugger safety bugger clearance.

Anyway, so our mains is. switch in there. it's oh okay. yeah, it's coming back over here and it's going to the fuse.

Okay, so that is our input mains fuse after the switch and then it buggers off down to the board down here into a mains here. So that's just a PCB mount 240 volt primary and it looks like a couple of windings on the secondary maybe to AC low voltage AC secondary windings. but it also jumps over to here. So AHA right away, this active output goes directly from the mains active over to here.

So obviously if they're injecting anything, it's going to be on the return mutual here. And aha, what's this transformer for? So let's anyway. let's follow the neutral down here. Blue goes down to the board.

Just got some mob protection down in their diet bridge. Oh look, there's bodge wire. That blue wire. that blue wires coming.

oh that's is that some sort of Wow Oh, hang on, are there you go? Why it has to be that long? If they got something in that, we'll have a look at that later. That's for other neutral. So neutral goes down to the board that'll be going over to the transform over here as well. The return neutral here doesn't connect over to here.

It goes through this other fuse and goes through this transformer here. AHA So yeah, that would be going I bet you there's a trace going from there. Yeah, I can see it on the board through the board, trace from there to there. So that's our supply transformer for our circuitry and I believe it'll be going over there as well.

So it's going into this transformer. So this is our signal coupling transformer in the neutral line which goes out here, so that makes sense. So yep, I was right. It is injecting frequencies onto the mains neutral line and then it looks like we just got a couple of switching trainees down in there.

Do we? for the our secondary side of that injection transformer, we'll call that and is that not an EEPROM That might be a that might be a micro unless that one's a micro. but it doesn't look like it. Nope, that's not a micro. That's a D7100 5:4 And that's a programmable timer chippy type things.

so that's got to be our micro under there. Alright, so given the vintage, my money is on an EEPROM programmable pic chip. That's where my money's at. Am I right? It's upside down.

All the electrons are gonna fall out. Ah no. I was often off the money. It is a big em.

but it's not microchip. It's a Motorola 60s, 68, 705. a prom version. Beautiful.

And that a squared pram. Rubbish. And like I said, these thumb wheel switches. These are absolutely fantastic things.

This one's actually great because it's got a plus/minus on there that's really quite nice. But these things are absolutely gorgeous. So this dials in the command, so obviously like it's going to encode like a word. You know, byte, a word, or whatever.

onto the mains and you just dial in the frequency. the trimmer pot here. Curiously, it goes over to three over there, which so maybe that's like a you know Lm317 regulator or something and it just sets. Adjust the level or something like that.

I don't know. There's not much else in there, just a simple HC series logic. So I'm not even going to bother to take that board out. There's nothing more interesting to see.

It's got to be more interesting is if we actually power this thing up and I have a look and then I might do some mom googly searching for others deck a bit k22 because that's obviously some sort of protocol and Zellweger wonder if they're still around now. This is interesting. All this cable here. There's nothing.

These two were all wired together and if I pull that. Yep, just to bear wires in there. so they weren't they're not electrically connected. What they're doing I think is using this as a capacitor.

It's like a What? I don't know why it has to be that long. Um, maybe like they're increasing the capacitance or something. but they're using that as a capacitor. Why? you'd have the ends like tinned like that? Because what it's doing is it's tapping off the bridge rectifier down in there.

That's happening off the negative output of the bridge rectifier. So it's tapping off that and then it's going into a Sim for Hcto to can only presume that that is something to do with. like they're detecting when the mains switches. That's their crude method of doing that.

Wow, that's pretty how you doing so anyway. see, Tio2 is a cordon or gate. Of course it's going into its sold it onto the pin their pin three. So that's one of the inputs of the first gate there.

And so there lived like AC coupling in and the mains. I've done that before in my clock mains clock circuit that I built when I was a teenager. Maybe I have to link in. The video wasn't quite like that.

you do AC couple it. but Jesus you know why. It's like it's not like you need some huge voltage isolation or something. Anyway, seems a bit silly buggers, but that's what they decided to do.

What? and I forgot to show you that it did have a neon light. so is that? yeah, it's actually. trust me, it's on. it's just really faint.

Anyway, we've got on a slush error so I don't know why the red things flashing. but anyway, it's flashing and we've got it hooked up on our output here. I've got no load connected. so I've got my Eevblog high voltage probe here because it's a proper way to safely measure mains voltage and other stuff.

Anyway, so we are at 704 volts peak-to-peak 245 volts. AC RMS Because yes, my Mayhans wattage here in the lab and at home as well is right on the high side of the allowable limit. It's like 246 247 commonly, so it's getting up there even though Australia is supposed to be nominally 230 volts, not 240 anyway. so we're gonna signal there I've got it set to Dec a bit and I'm gonna pulse the transmit and I don't see anything pulsing on this.

so maybe I need to set the dip switches and adjust in. the level here gets me Zippity Doo-dah shut The deal is K22 It's still flashing I presume it's flashing error and I've connected this side FS output to the scope as well and I'm triggering from that. presumably it's a 5 volt TTL signal and I'm still getting still getting nothing I can't There's just nothing coming out of that. so there is genuinely in an error there.

Whoa. Oh, hang on I Just played around with the code here and it stopped flashing. look I was always going up 969, 169 Wow Okay, oh Six Nine, will that? Aha got it. Got it.

It's a code. Oh Active There we go. So here we go. I'll just hit active so it's transmitting and buh buh flush like flesh the flesh and then that one's not labeled and the active turns off.

so it transmits for like five seconds or something and it switches off our 69. Weiner Okay, so what I'm going to do is actually single-shot capture this. There we go and the it looks like there's no data encoded on that. so I don't know what that FS Output: It's just like a clock.

Nope, silly me. I just wasn't thinking forth dimensionally. Let's do that again. Slower time base and Bingo! We of course have a There's the data encoded there.

so that is 69 encoded in I presume Dec a bit protocol I Guess Okay, I'm just going to repeat that same thing so that's 69. I'm going to repeat it with the that's positive 69. You gonna repeat it with 0 0 0. So let's try that again.

Single-shot Captcha Trigger: Yeah, that is different. Yep, that's different to what we had before. Yep, so it's encoding that on there. Let me do a higher frequency.

Actually, this thing's pretty intelligent. Check it out if you just like randomly flip the dip switches. It gives you an error so it knows that you know you're either not selected a proper frequency or you haven't selected a and or a proper command on this. Let's go to 2 Kilohertz.

So I need 1, 3, 4, & 6 on? Nope. 1, 3, 4 & 6. That should be right? Ha! They're actually grayed out. so I'll go for 1, 2, 4, & 6, 1, 2, 4 & 6.

There you go. So it knows that's brilliant. So let's trigger that again. Share: We Single-shot Captcha Oh yeah, got some higher frequency switching stuff in there I can see it but because this is AC coupled, it's been how you're doing and there you go, that's just a higher frequency clock.

Sure enough, if we measure that frequency of channel to one point, Five Nine Kilohertz, I've got to set to 1600. Good enough for Australia. Might get more accurate if I go in, but one point, Five Eight four, there you go. So yeah, that just changes the clock rate effectively.

It looks like like the data rate like the modulation rate is the same, but the frequency just sets the higher clock rate. That's interesting and even a stick in a 50 watt load on this thing Unfortunately still doesn't do anything. The yellow is the mains are waveform there and you can see that there's no modulation change at the actual point of switching there. so you know we can go in there and there's just like it's just nothing.

So this thing could be faulty I Suspect Maybe you know the switching training or something like that. switching circuitry could be a cactus so it is supposed to result in like a you know five 10% ripple on your mains there. but obviously nothing's doing there at all so it's got to be faulty. Anyway, let's go to the Google is and see if we can investigate this deck a bit and K22 stuff.

As it turns out, there's a Wikipedia page for this. Zellweger Off-peak System is a brand name for an electric switching device used to control off peak electrical loads such as water heaters and and and and probably you know, street lamps and other type stuff. I carry a current. It's called like ripple injection.

Stuff like that goes under various names, but yeah, Zoe goes one of the big players in here. And yeah, they talk about things like stare amplifier, stereos can pick up the noise and all that sort of stuff. Imma or ceiling fans can pick up the pick up the ripple, their telephone lines, and all sorts of stuff. you go in some parts of the Sydney a thousand and forty two Hertz signal usually consists several bursts of a few seconds off and on for a period of up is 50 seconds on.

Coded to effect only selective equipment. Of course there you go. Radioactive risk of one type of Zellweger meter. It contains low-risk radioactive material.

There you go anyway. so that's interesting. and there's a thing for a bloody Queenslanders up there. some for Sydney North Coast and stuff like that.

and it looks like there are different brands and things like that. So if we go down here yet technology utilize various hardware telegrams, they use K22 Dick a bit. LG Om I Met Internet is that company in these land? The sticker we had on the back, but of course it's our Zellweger And yet there's all. We're standard, but this Zolab model.

Maybe they had their own standard, but they support it. Looks like Dick a bit. I don't know the history of that anyway. these are the different companies Endeavour Energy I was greeted and all those sort of Stern Gemini are I've heard of.

I'm some of them I haven't heard of but they yeah they have all these different standards dec a bit. sounds like one of the major players but cake 22s in there to then. we have this huge document here which I'll link in down below: Ripple Injection Low Control Systems Australian Power Quality and Reliability Centre Mr. From the University of Wollongong it's very comprehensive, so look I won't go through the whole thing, whole executive summary and stuff like that.

Ripple Injection allows access to cheaper off-peak electricity and all that sort of jazz Mitigation is the ripple injection methods for those are playing along at home or into your infrastructure and it's generally applied at the eleven Kilovolt our transmission that level and because there's various are step-down voltage phasors in the distribution of electricity and it's typically done the 11 Kilovolts which will then go through the Transformers on the street poles or underground. or you know, at ground level that then will transform that down to 240 volts which goes to your home and stuff like that. So there's little schematics there you go, check it, so they inject it yeah, coupling capacitors at the substation busbar there and then 11 Kilovolts. Oh and then it's stepped down and then it goes into you.

Yeah, that's the 240 volt house. There you. go. So and here's a photo of a typical injection equipment that I can't see much, but it's got injection capacitors and you know, tuning coils and isolation, transformer compensation caps, absorption coils.

hmm. Interesting. Sure, you power aficionados are getting pretty moist right about now. And here's the K22 Protocol coded pulsar and this is from Zellweger as well.

so you know, looks like there we go. they own the market. There you go. there's the dicker bit coded pulse and that's I Think what we saw we just saw like those pulses there on the screen depending on the setting and stuff like that.

Unfortunately, we didn't see it rippling on the mains though, unfortunately. So this is what it's going to look like here. and I actually saw this the other week. I was doing some mains stuff playing around with it and I definitely saw that here in the lab.

So I good. like hopefully I'll be able to catch your it again, but obviously that's a time of day. think I didn't remember when I was testing. it might have been late at night or something like that.

so I might have to either they come in after 10:00 p.m. or something and try and capture it. But I did actually see this modulate this ripple modulation on my mains our signal on the scope the other day. and of course I knew exactly what it was because I've seen it many times before.

and yeah, it just pops up occasionally. So if your products aren't so this is what we would have seen, we would have seen like that for how long's a pack at all and whatever a second or whatever we would have actually seen half a second, we would have actually seen that ripple on there for like half a second, then go away and then that when you have ripple that's encoded as a one and the lack of ripple is encoded as a zero or vice-versa However, you want to decode it. There you go. and that's 750 Hertz on a 50 Hertz signal.

So that's what it looks like. so by all means safely monitor your own main signal. You can actually do that with a if you want to do it safely. So if you want to do this safely with a CRO Yes! Now this oscilloscope rubbish.

Anyway, cuz we're in Australia just CRO Give me a break anyway. so you want to do it safely Imma Just use a regular isolation you know? Step to AC step-down transformer 110 or 240 volts down to you know, fire 10 volts AC or something like that. and then you can safely probe the with your regular scope the AC signal and if you sit there long enough and twiddle your thumbs, you'll eventually capture or you might be able to set up a trigger. Of course, because the levels are reasonably high, you should be able to set up a trigger.

unless you get other glitches on the mains. Maybe you can set up and capture a peak capture to get trigger off and single-shot capture some of this mains frequency. So so an entire signal injection can run for approximately our 3 minutes, so that's actually quite. That's quite significant, So you do stand a good cancer a chance of capturing that if you are actually probing the mains and looking for it like I said.

I Just saw I was randomly doing some unrelated mains testing the other day. I had my high voltage probe hooked up and sure enough, there was the ripple. So apparently there is an Australian standard for this for those playing along at home and it looks like maybe you know 4 to 6 percent modulation variants so that's so quite substantial you should definitely be able to see it. They tell you that receiving relays that would be like in your fuse box to our decode.

this can work down to signals of approximately 2 volts, but signal levels due to amplification of up to 30 volts have been recorded in the field. It's it was only approximately 5 volts. Might be a typical injected thing for our 240 volt signal. So there you go.

That's fascinating stuff. Shame, it didn't work. I Could maybe attempt to troubleshoot it and repair and see why it's not actually injecting this stuff. it's coming out of the BNC connector.

But yeah, maybe one of the switching trainees is gone or something like that. Perhaps it's fascinating how you can get this ripoli stuff on your main. so if you ever see something like that and it looks a bit, how are you doing like this? You know what it is. so let us know in other countries too.

So at no idea if this is just you know an Aussie thing I believe it's in New Zealand as well or whether or not this is common in your country. Do you get this or what do you call it is that you know off peak Ripple is a triple injection? Is it called something else and what are the typical? who are the players in the market cos Zellweger seem to own the market here by looks of things and let us know in the comments down below. so I hope you enjoyed that video. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

And as always you can discuss a down below and over on the Eevee blog forum and subscribe over on Eevblog TV if you want decentralized instead of this centralized YouTube Rubbish. Catch you next time.