American exit sign.

The bane of my existence. Got a building full of these - most only two years old. The batteries are very low quality and start dying about 8 months in. Always the same - 1 dead cell in each pack.

Here I was thinking that I'd hear about all kinds of cheap unpleasantness in the US one, but I end up hearing the opposite.

Michael Thompson

It's worth looking at some of the sites and forums dedicated to Halloween and Xmas tech. They often share information about their setups.

Big Clive

Murica!

Great video's Big Clive I'm glad I jioned, one time you said you like to do more with Arduino, I'm into Halloween an Xmas allot and I'm looking to make some Prop controllers 4 and 8 channel with sound. it needs to control lighting, PWM motors, some drill motors, like the PicoBoo from Frightprops.com . but i know with your help it would be a lot better than there's. and i got some DMX lighting to add in Tell me what ya think, Keep up the good work

That sign just begs for a new faceplate that reads "Evil" instead of "Exit" :)

I wonder, is the extra capacitor large enough to cause a visible dip/flicker when testing the unit - to provide feedback that you've switched from AC to battery? I know one's I've tested have a flicker right after pushing the test button...

TM

Oh and I didn't cap the red wire and it gave me a good zap. Good note haha

I installed this EXACT sign two days ago and noticed how simple it's circuitry is.

(Also, running universal voltage 100-250 volt computer gear off the 208 phase-to-phase voltage is super common in commercial situations these days, usually with a rack-mount PDU that plugs into a 3 phase twistlock outlet and then presenting just female IEC connectors to be used with IEC-IEC cords so you don't plug ordinary loads in.)

Jamie Magin

480 volt is the phase to phase voltage in a lot of common industrial 3 phase stuff, 277 is the phase to neutral. (And then we have 208/120 typically in a lot of office situations so you can feed the regular 120 V single phase loads.) The 240/120 split phase common in residential service, i.e. single phase balanced around a 0 volt neutral seems to be quite a bizarre thing to Europeans.

Jamie Magin