Hello EEVblogers,
I'm some Briton of Bretagne, my post will be quite long, facing a very problematic problem in my house, I'll try to be talkative as much as enlightening the problem. It started in July 2018. I stand still strong and face the Nightmare. What is it about ? It started on the Bastille day, 6 o'clock in the morning, everyone's asleep in France by that hour, that day in France, except my f* frog neighbor.
I think it's an electrical problem, leakage currents maybe, I'm really not sure since it's not my job and I'm not an expert. I tried to request my electricity's distributor for help. In vain. I never experienced such troubles before that 2018 year. Have lived in different countries, different cities, never had trouble before that date. Today I can be quiet, no worries elsewhere, but not anymore at home. It's why I request help today.
The neighbor is a backer, consuming about 3.000€ of electricity bill per month. (thank you Postman for confusing my Pobox and his). This backer has one 3phase + 1phase of my shared 3phase cable (where I have 2 lines). As I'll say later he recently added a second 3phase cable, so he got in total 2x3phase cable + One single phase cable.
First time it started like on/off and stops like on/off and restarts again by pseudo-period since.
I have gone through a lot of white nights since 2018 and I'm going totally exhausted this spring.
I gave interest to Water distribution at first, thinking it was impossible to be Electrical. But the more I looked on it and searched, the more I was going dead end, seeing some aspect looking like an electrical problem. I finally ended to gave interest at EMI and Dirty Electricity documents. I gather every potential topics, and read about. I face like 16 symptoms of what a person affected by Dirty Electricity is said to experience by physicians.
by instance experiencing 12 of 14 troubles listed there:
https://youtu.be/AwuCXbrUZyQ?t=520plus sometimes tachycardie and magnetophosphenes. The most annoying problem being unable to sleep, sometimes up to 5 days in a row. You become very Angry.
Having crawled the healthcare system in France, they all stated I'm perfectly fine. A professor of Nantes University Hospital categorized me as "Electrosensible". Everyone is in a sense IMHO, exposed to certains steps of Electricity. We got some build and shapes differences.
I've made scientific studies, mathematics, physics, mechanics and engineering, then computer science. I would like to get further and bust the problem. I'm not necessary super skilled, since I focused on Computer programming for 20 years. I try my best to step back into hobby electronics for a few years.
This is the frame.
So I started by taking away the possibility it comes from my own system. All shut done, the problems continues.
As the feeling was like a constant vibration, I started some experiences with Android tablets accelerometers and dedicated Apps => Mercalli's scale, plotting some noise. As it was giving results, but I was unable to log it, and since it's unfonctionnal on a Sensor+Proble basis I needed to find or build a system. (Having a job, being exhausted by lack of sleep, it took a bit of time to build a good solution.)
Looking for sensor, I selected the MEAS Nanosense 100, good velocity and very sensible.
It is quite simple, consisting of a Piezo-Electric sensor connected to some Arduino nano. Monitoring pins, the sensor sends its data to the Arduino, which throws it to some rPI clone. Some daemon listens and EPOCH+nanoseconds tags the figures collected each 10ms into some 15min files. Those files are thrown to a central server, I collect all datas into some Influx database, and monitor with Grafana.
Here is some examples of what I plot:
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https://imgur.com/a/8mS3Gbb -
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I've cabled my whole house, 2 levels + a basement a 10x20m garden to run ethernet cables everywhere.
I monitor: back Garden, Basement in 2 spots, Ground level, Deskroom, Sleeping Room, Frontroom, Computer room.
I've put that into my back garden. It's a quiet place, but as I feel the hassel in my whole property, it records movements.
I also added some barometric sensor, temperature sensor, humidity sensor outside to check it has nothing in common with the waves I monitor.
I also added RaspberryShake and RaspberryBoom to my sensors. Which points nothing particular about infrasounds and seismic movements.
I also added 2 pairs of RLC filters on the front of my 2 incoming power lines, Neutral & Phase being filtered each.
Then I added some microphones, recording my sleeping room all days long, a really impacted area of the house, close to the neighbor, and extract spectral traces out of records. I monitor the complete signal, and also extract a "zoom" on 20Hz-300Hz scale. Sometimes I have weird blocks of continuous signal, often on 50Hz harmonics, and 25Hz. "half 50Hz harmonic", can it be ?
https://imgur.com/a/2vWCaHWWanting to be able to totally shutdown the power lines for some times and being able to continue to monitor with my piezo-electric sensors, I also acquired 2 PDU, with Voltage & Frequency probe on them, able to feed on each power line my servers, switchs, and particulary the POE switches that feed all the ZeroPi gathering the piezo-electric sensors.
I see in the end constant and daily falls in the power given by the power company, on one line compared to the second one. But this happen during days, and the trouble is more important at night.. starting often just after midnight, and going quite regulary up to 3 or 4 days. You can't sleep in those case. Only parad I found is with a hammoc.
I think that my sensor being behind a 5V DC POE feeder, being a PSU, behind some RLC Filter, my measures are mostly clean, not affected by noise. I maybe wrong ? Tell me please.
Piezo-E sensors are sensible either to seismic factor, either to electrical noise, both. (I've seen on Piezotronics catalog their high quality models comes with filters to avoid Electrical noise below 3db. But I haven't those filters on mine.).
So I monitor potentially movement and electricy IMHO. Am I wrong? but since I placed most of my sensors in very quiet areas of my house concerning movements, I'm mostly monitoring electrical phenomenons. Am I right?
Sensor can be very sensitive. By instance if I enter my warehouse, the sensor located 12m away marks a spike, but spikes are really ponctual, and you can out them easily from the whole 10ms forest of measures. (can be a way to bust bed intruders and send 911 alert email..)
Recently that d**** f***** neighbor added a new 3phase cable to feed his bulding, and I felt like things going harder.. but it's just feeling. I want TRACES and datas.
So I acquired a Scope. and some multimeters to experience further. I was happy to later discover it was certified as beeing a some great entry level scope by Mr. Dave Jones himself
..
With a multimeter, plugged to Ground on one probe, plugged to a copper rod on the other probe, sticked to V AC,
handling the rod, I'm able to go up to 12V readings on multimeter.
So I plugged that same rod to the scope, and receive a complete 50Hz drawing. About 2V of height measured.
I then plugged a second probe behind a laboratory Power Supply, throwing out AC as well and receiving a 2nd sinus wave. not in phase together.
I have the relative chance of owning 2 independant power lines in my building. They come from the same 3-Phase cable coming from outside. 1 cable for each account. (The 3rd line of this cable runs to the neigbhORING Backer.)
Connecting a second Laboratory Power Supply to my second line, and a third probe to it, I end up having 2 phases of the 3-phase.
The third monitored probe, the copper rod, being not in Phase with each of my 2 lines.
I feel that CopperRodSineWave looks like having something near of looking like the 3rd phase, but in negative response. I would like to be reviewed on that point, if it's of any interest of just crap I'm doing.
https://imgur.com/a/EHZ6jxwI would like to request and ideas about what to do to spot a potential leakage current, the potential idea that it comes from the neighbor, with the fact it's impossible for me to talk with him. His wife HATES ME far enough to feel happy of my prejudice. The kind of witch you'll never want as a neighbor.
To be sure, I also added a lot of gum carpet below a lot of electrical equipments in my house. I spent more bucks on changing computer fans for some low noise Noctua, changed PSU..
Oh yes, I also bought some HF reader, to garante I'm not affected by the high frequency cellphones waves & so on.. Nothing's bad at all on that point.
I'm fluent with Unix systems, C, PERL, C#, got some advanced level in Electricy Housing, Cable Monkeys stuff. I also studied enough on Laws of Electrocinetic, Electrostatic, Electromagnetism, Thermodynamics, Optics. I'm open minded, but totally lost at the moment finding not a single guy in my Area able to be Pro enough to come and point what is wrong. Plus, public services don't give a fuck.
Should I go also for some expensive Gauss Meter ?
fine grain Monitoring being the goal, and Justice for All.
I'm open for any tips and tricks to bust the cause of the problem. Any technical help, advice would be much appreciated.
thanks for reading that tl;dr.
Best regards,
Alex