Coadunate wrote:
Sometimes I work on electronic equipment and at times I find myself replacing electronic boards that have stopped working. I don’t know if this is a coincidence but it seems as if this type of electronic board malfunction occurs in waves or groups even though they are miles apart from each other. I have had to replace several boards in the past few weeks. For anyone who is more experienced in electronics than I am my questions are:
1. Should I invest in a earth/ground resistance tester and if so which would you recommend and why?
2. To what extent do you think electrostatic buildup due to cold and dry weather might have on this problem?
3. To what extent do you think solar flares or wind might have on this problem?
1. What would the relevance be?
2. Only if people make a habit of scuffing their shoes more than usual, turning the lights off, and demonstrating the sparks they can discharge into the kit you are replacing.
3. Solar flares would be irrelevant. Wind might exacerbate the static potentials, but I doubt it would have much significance (other than as in 2 above).
Purely from statistics, you should expect failures to occur in "waves or groups". If this did not happen, there would be some nefarious principle at work, causing the failures to spread themselves out into more uniform patterns.
_________________
"Striking up conversations with strangers is an autistic person's version of extreme sports."
Kamran Nazeer