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| Why does this flying bug UV light trap intermittently trigger my GFCI? |
| (1/4) > >> |
| NeverDie:
The name of the product is DynaTrap. You plug into mains, whereupon it powers on four UV led's to attract gnats to it, and they then get stuck to a nearby sticky glue board when they land on it. https://www.dynatrap.com/dynatrap-dot-indoor-flying-insect-trap It actually works, but the problem is that it intermittently trips my GFCI. I've tried it on two different GFCI circuits (a different GFCI in each case), with the same result. Why? Attached is an overview photo together with a photo of the circuit board inside. |
| timenutgoblin:
Check VR1 (varistor?), it looks like it might be damaged. Gnat's what I reckon. |
| Stray Electron:
My advice is to toss that thing. It's been proven over and over again that they attract more bugs into the area that you want to protect than they catch. It's also been shown that they catch far more beneficial bugs than they do pests, such as mosquitoes. Using one of these is a lose-lose situation as far as I'm concerned. |
| jonpaul:
Dangerous mains current leakage, Chinese junk j |
| tom66:
Since it only has L and N this is an interesting question as there can be no mains leakage unless you touch it. A device like this probably has a very cheap SMPS in it which is not compliant with the required EMC standards, and the conducted noise could be causing the RCD to detect a fault. But this does seem to stretch believability, as you would have thought an RCD would need to deal with a lot more EMC before a shitty ~1 watt SMPS would cause a hassle. Could there be a fault with the socket instead? Perhaps inserting the device into the socket is allowing a conductive path to form, like some kind of conductive gunk stuck in the socket. Or perhaps you have a swapped neutral somewhere, which means that the neutral current is bypassing the RCD, causing an imbalance and trip. |
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