Quote from: rjk on April 03, 2012, 07:51:10 PM

Quote from: fuuka on April 03, 2012, 07:32:56 PM

With the sometimes questionable construction of mining rigs and running lots of GPUs with lots of power in tight spaces, I wonder if having a fire alarm directly over the setup would be a good idea.

What smoke/fire alarms would be good for electrical fires? I have this nagging suspicion that the $5 ones at wal-mart aren't the best. Grin

Maybe even have it rigged so if there's smoke the power is automatically cut...

Fairly sure there are regulations on minimum performance levels of something as important as a smoke detector, so even the cheap ones should be OK. As for auto power shutdown, well I don't know if anyone has really thought of that. Of course, expensive UPSs have an EPO (Emergency Power Off) port that kills the load if you connect the pins together, but no one uses those for mining.

I don't even know of any smoke detectors with relay or signal outputs, other than expensive built-in systems used for commercial buildings. It would be a good idea though.

Get a normal fire alarm. Check to see the voltage and current that goes through the buzzer and find a solidstate relay that fits within those limits. Use this relay to trigger larger mechanical relays to cut out your power across your breakers. A better option might be a small arduino controller that monitors these pins, sends out a SOS when SHTF and then triggers relays to cut power. All just ideas thought up while reading this but there are many different approaches to this. In the end something battery backed so in the event of an electrical fire causing a breaker to trip you don't lose your watchdog.

The chemical temperature triggered extinguishers, if placed correctly, will work also. They'll save the building but effectively destroy your gear.