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Utah Integrator at wits end and about to comment ritual suicide with my multimeter probes. Please help a brother out.
Culinary water tank at the end of a one mile shielded 2-pair (untwisted I think) 18 gage wire. One pair goes to hatch intrusion switch, the other tank sensor. The sensor on the tank is Ametek Drexelbrook US-21 ultrasonic. PLC is SCADAPack 350.
Intermittently the loop starts bouncing. Voltage drops from 24 to 10 or so and the current mirrors this. Period of bounce is on the order of a few seconds and may directly correspond to the ultrasonic ranging sensor firing... not sure.
I have had several sensors installed at this location (same model) and each behaves a little differently but I always run into a time of year when they start bouncing. They may go for 6 months without an episode and then it will start. Summer seems to be the worst.
When I power the sensor locally from 3 nine volt alkaline cells it works perfectly.
Any thoughts? Am I at the margins of what this setup can source current-wise and when my ultrasonics fire off and pull a big slug of electrons it droops and then bounces? Could I modify this setup with caps at the sensor or some other approach? My distributor and manufacturer have not much help.
Culinary water tank at the end of a one mile shielded 2-pair (untwisted I think) 18 gage wire. One pair goes to hatch intrusion switch, the other tank sensor. The sensor on the tank is Ametek Drexelbrook US-21 ultrasonic. PLC is SCADAPack 350.
Intermittently the loop starts bouncing. Voltage drops from 24 to 10 or so and the current mirrors this. Period of bounce is on the order of a few seconds and may directly correspond to the ultrasonic ranging sensor firing... not sure.
I have had several sensors installed at this location (same model) and each behaves a little differently but I always run into a time of year when they start bouncing. They may go for 6 months without an episode and then it will start. Summer seems to be the worst.
When I power the sensor locally from 3 nine volt alkaline cells it works perfectly.
Any thoughts? Am I at the margins of what this setup can source current-wise and when my ultrasonics fire off and pull a big slug of electrons it droops and then bounces? Could I modify this setup with caps at the sensor or some other approach? My distributor and manufacturer have not much help.