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Nexus and static electricity

G

grich

Anyone had problems with static electricity buildup on scorer's tables with advertising panels?

I was working a college game last night and the Nexus audio went bad at the start of the game, and again during the post-game. The ready light on the Nexus would go out for a few seconds, but the call didn't drop. When it went bad during the post-game we were treated to bleeding eardrums from a loud burst of digital noise in our headphones. This happened exactly when the post-game interview subject came up to the scorer's table and picked up the headset.

The table has advertising signs printed on a scroll of vinyl-coated fabric that runs against a bed of foam plastic. The scroll had just rewound to the beginning when the headset was touched, and I'm guessing this built up a static charge that discharged into the headset when it was touched. Thoughts?
 
I can't seem to delete my accidental reply. Sorry about your Nexus!
 
Sounds reasonable. The Nexus isn't more sensitive to this than any other computerized product, but the power supply does carry an earth ground to the metal chassis (as well as the grounds on your headsets), and if it gets hit with static, that's several kilovolts running through the ground plane of the DSP chips in there. Hard for a processor not to react to that. The noise was the sound of the local decoder losing sync on the incoming data, an unfortunate by-product of the way G.722 decoders find their way.

Because only low voltage hits the Nexus through the power supply cable, it's pretty safe to use a ground lifter on the AC mains connection. But it might cause heartache elsewhere in the form of ground loops (buzzing). Of course if there's an alternate earth path through your mixer or other connected device, it won't help.

Nexus (and all Comrex gear) goes through testing for immunity to static charges, with the pass criteria being that it "heal" itself from any bad effects. Looks like that's what you saw.
Tom Hartnett
Comrex
 
It's only the second time I had a problem with a Nexus in the field...the last was in the 90's at an Arena FB game in Des Moines (bad connection on the power connector).

Thanks for the reply!
 
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