7zark7

So I looked into the HDD power and was kind of surprised. A newer, larger HDD actually consumes less than the ones I already have in there so I guess going to bigger drives is actually going to save me some power at the wall. One of the existing drives is rated at 1.5A on 12V and 0.75A on 5V. Wow 21.75W on one drive. The others were much lower. I wonder if when I see around 50W at the wall, if it's recording on the other drives which are rated less than half the power.

I am on vacation in Florida and I am surfing my surv cameras over the internet. I was trying to review some previous footage but my system locked up as the DVR was playing back footage. When I rebooted and tried to log back into the DVR, I couldn't. So I get my cousin to go to the house and unplug the unit and restart it. It beeps when he unplugs it and now it won't start back up again? I;ve been trying to remotely debug it with him with no luck. There is power at the wall outlet for sure. I got him to open the unit up and unplug all the HDDs to see if it will even start up (i.e. fan spinning) and nothing. It's completely dead. Anyone have any idea what could be wrong? Is there a fuse or something that could have blown? ESD damage? Anything?

So I can confirm that indeed it was the brick that died. I found a bunch of different bricks that do 19V with 5A or higher current but none of them matches perfectly. The DC side tip is a little different. But no biggie, lopped off the end of the old one and soldered it onto the new one. I am now running with a 19V 7.9A brick. It's an AC BEL API3AD25. I also hooked up a wattmeter on the AC side just to see what the pull from the wall is, and during boot up I saw a peak of 71W for second or two. That's at the wall so the DC draw is about 57W (assuming 80% conversion and that my cheap ass wattmeter is accurate 8D ). Despite the possibility for error I'm pretty sure that's more than the stock brick can deliver over a long period of time. Luckily this is only during boot up. During normal operation I'm seeing about 52W from the wall during recording so assuming 80% efficiency again the DC draw is about 42W, right on with what Scorpion mentioned. This is with 3 HDDs installed. So now that I have the mondo power brick, I wonder what's the highest power HDDs that I can install. I want to maximize the storage and use the biggest drives I can find, but usually they draw more current. Anyone know how much current the internals can take? I don't think I will have a problem feeding it power from the outside anymore. The old brick would be fairly hot all the time. This one is at ambient temp. Not even warm to the touch.

I haven't been back to look at it but one of my colleagues found one kicking around. It's from a laptop. I'll post back the details when I get back and see it. The tip is slightly bigger and is loose, I know that much, but it's tight enough to get the unit up and running. It's been running fine for a day now. BTW, I've already modded the unit by putting heatsinks on all the chips that got hot enough to warrant it. I did this when I first installed the unit. My previous unit (AVC777) had loud fans over a couple of the hot ICs and made a lot of noise. It was a bad solution in my opinion as those fans were going to die at some point. On this unit I left all the fans in there but put as big a heatsink as possible on all the ICs that were getting hot.

So I got my cousin to try the new power brick and it powered up no problem. So it's the brick that died. Now about that warranty...I bought the unit direct from AVTECH via a friend in Taiwan that called them up and ordered it. He then shipped it to me. This was much more economical compared to the local saleman. Even if I have a warranty, I can't even get tech support from them so I doubt they'll send me a new power brick. I don't even remember how long ago it was that I got it, so it may be the warranty has expired (how long of a warranty do they have anyways?). And I don't want to have to go through the hassle of trying to get it via Taiwan and bother my buddy again. So I guess I'm going to have to stick with an aftermarket brick unless I can get an OEM one for cheap. Honestly I wonder if it's a bad thing to stick with the one I got now, because I'm fairly certain that the stock power brick is undersized, atleast for whatever combination I'm using. I have three big PATA drives in there and even just idling (not recording) the brick gets pretty hot. If I had to guess, what happened is the unit was stuck in playback and record mode for quite a long time (when I lost connection with it) and it overloaded the brick eventually. That's only a guess, but the only thing that makes sense. Anyhow, thanks a lot for your advice Scorpion, you do a great service to this community.

5A good enough? Is the input jack the same as say a laptop 19 V power supply? I have a 19V 5A DC supply from a laptop available. Can I just get him to try that and see if it fires up?

I have a high quality UPS that the DVR is connected to so I'm not really worried too much about power surges. I'm more worried about human body discharge or something like that. I got my cousin to go in again and look for an LED on the brick and he couldn't find one. I walked him through a simple check of the output of the brick with a voltmeter and if he did it right, it appears the brick is dead. No output voltage. What is the output specs of the brick? *edit* - BTW, my previous DVR was another AVTECH one that got zapped by a lightening strike. It didn't die, but the picture was all shakey after the strike. A lot of other devices in the house completely kicked the bucket. My insurance company didn't believe me when I filed the claim, so I used the footage that I recorded to show them. Big storm, lots of rain, picture is clear. Then big lightening flash and the picture is all wavey and distorted. Adjuster couldn't deny it after that.

Thanks for all the tips. I might need help later on. Yes you are right, my cousin doesn't understand electronics. I will report back when I return and take a look at it. Thanks again. *edit* what's the likelihood that there's some sort of ESD damage? Are these kinds of devices prone to this kind of damage?

yes it has the 19V (I guess) brick. It used to run hot all the time I remember. Does it have a light on the brick? If so, I can get my cousin to check that. I am sure the AC outlet has power. I got him to plug in another device into the same outlet and it works. He tried multiple times on two different days. I'm sure he's got the right button and he's tried to push it quickly and then just sit there and hold it for 30 seconds with nothing happening. I have extensive electronics knowledge and have access to state of the art scopes and probes. But I have never tried to debug a DVR. When I get back I will take a look at it. If you have a schematic for this device that would pretty much get me to where I need to be. Otherwise I value any other information that you can give me. Thanks!