Very urgent help needed

[wolffman64]

Last night I connected everything properly and integrated my RA+ with my red sea 500 tank.

When I got home today and went to feed the fish, I got a really big electric shock when I touched the water! I panicked a bit both because I was really worried about my live stock, but also because I'm leaving tomorrow for a 2 week overseas trip.

After much trial and error, plugging and unplugging, to try and determine what it is that is causing this. My volt meter shows that I have nearly 115 volts between the water and ground!!! In the end I unplugged the RA completely, and connected everything in the tank directly to a power strip / power board, and 0.115 V is shown on the meter. When I then connect the Relay unit again to the wall, and then plug the power strip into the relay, the 115 volts are back again?
Help!!! Could it be a faulty Relay unit, or am I doing something wrong??

[wolffman64]

After 200454 different tests and opening the relay up, I think I have found the problem. The issue, I think, are the plug adapters that was delivered with my kit, since I live in Australia.

When I measure the voltage directly in the relay plugs, I get 240v between live and ground, 240v between live and neutral, and less than 1v between neutral and ground.

If I then use the plug adapter from US to AU plugs, and measure in that, I get 240v between Live and neutral, but get between 70-80v between neutral and ground, and something similar between live and ground?!?!?!

When I had a further look at the adapter, I can see that it's not properly made, since the hole for the ground part of the plug is too big to grip the ground pin, and it doesn't seem to be connected properly to the ground pin that goes into the Relay.

Please, could somebody that is a bit more educated than me in electrics tell me if a non connected ground could give me these problems with the tank (voltage between ground and water)

Extremely grateful for any help!

[rimai]

Are all the adapters like that?

[jegillis]

http://www.mikeholt.com/technical.php?i ... %20Article

you have an open neutral.

[jegillis]

Sounds like your ground is actually the neutral in your outlet (or relay). the non connected ground pin of the adaptor (neutral) is open.

[wolffman64]

Are all the adapters like that?

Hi Roberto,

Unfortunately, yes. I tested them all and had the same issue. I went out and bought better adapters the next morning and connected everything up again. No issues with voltage and electric shocks anymore, and the voltage between the Live, Neutral and Ground showed the normal and expected values. Definitely all down to faulty adapters. Very relieved, since I'm now away for the next 2 weeks in Sweden. I would suggest that you don't supply those adapters to any customers in Australia. They might work for UK customers, since their ground pin is wider, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Could this problem also have affected what I described in my other thread, that the RA only allowed one update of the software, and when I tried again it completely hangs, and I have to reboot both the RA and the PC before I can update the program again?

[rimai]

Very strange. I've supplied this to AUS before and never had problems, but thanks for letting me know.
I'll investigate.
I think the upload is unrelated.

[sabo]

I ended up buying US cables for all my pumps and lights, and cut the plugs off the heaters and put US ones on. No pesky adapters.