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Power Outage Warning Circuit

5 to 15V supply - LED indicator Adjustable time detection

A circuit capable of detecting even a very short power outage, can be useful, mainly if embedded into existing appliances like mains powered counters, timers, clocks and the like.

At switch-on of the appliance, the LED illuminates, but pressing on P1 it goes off and remains in this state until a power outage occurs. When power supply is restored, the LED illuminates steadily until you press P1 again.

The circuit sensitivity can be adjusted by Trimmer R5. This means that, under the control of R5, the LED may not light if the mains is missing for a short interval in the 1 to 15 seconds range.

Circuit Diagram :

 Power Outage Warning Circuit Diagram

Circuit Operation :

IC1A and IC1B NAND gates are wired as a set-reset flip-flop. R1 and C1 provide auto-set of the flip-flop when the circuit is powered, so pin 3 of IC1A goes high and pin 4 of IC1B goes low. This allows the outputs of IC1C and IC1D, wired in parallel as inverters, to go high driving the LED D1 on. The flip-flop is reset by pushing on P1.

As the circuit is intended to be powered from the same appliance that is monitoring, the supply is derived from the ac voltage available at the existing transformer secondary winding (see the upper box of the circuit diagram enclosed in the dashed blue line). The circuit will work with ac voltage values in the 5 - 15V range.

A simple diode-capacitor cell (D2-C2) is sufficient to provide the necessary dc voltage. A rather low value was chosen for C2 in order to allow the circuit to detect very short periods of power failure.

The resistance value of R4 + R5 controls the discharge time of C2: with R5 set to the minimum value, the circuit will signal power outages from 1 sec. onwards. If R5 is set to the maximum, the circuit will signal power outages from about 15 sec. onwards.

Notes :

• R3 value should be reduced accordingly if the transformers secondary ac voltage is below 10V
• The circuit can be constructed as an independent unit by simply adding a small transformer with a primary winding suited to the local mains voltage and a secondary winding rated from 5 to 15V AC.

Source :www.redcircuits.com