Comment by amiga-workbench
1 year ago
Its a parasitic tap that connects to the mains power cable going into the device. It then phase locks an inverter with said mains power, allowing the mains power cable to be unplugged and the whole lot transported elsewhere on battery power.
How do you reliably get to the copper without shorting it?
With special equipment and by half-pulling/disassembling the power outlet. See https://wiebetech.com/products/hotplug-field-kit/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G8sEYCOv-o
Careful application of a box cutter for the outer sheath followed by something resembling a scotchlok connector for line and neutral.
Edit: If the machine is plugged into a power bar / power strip / whatever you want to call it, this is much easier still: Plug the vampire UPS into the power bar as well, wait for it to sync up to the grid, and disconnect the bar from the outlet. The UPS continues to feed power into the bar and thus keeps the machine powered.
Power strips make this easier of course, but every outlet usually has two plugs and most* of the time they are wired together. You just need to plug into the other plug.
* In case they are split for whatever reason (switched plug, different circuit) whatever, just take off the faceplate, pull out the outlet, and now you have direct access to the screw terminals and copper wiring on the outlet. You could wire into the plug using the second set of terminals or via the other connection method (one being the screw terminals, the other being the "insert into the hole" depending on which is used) and take the whole outlet with you.
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As far as i'm aware, often times they just plug into an open socket on an existing powerstrip that are so often used for PCs, no vampire-ing required. You can then unplug the powerstrip from the wall, it stays powered, inputing electricity through one of the sockets instead of drawing.
I guess a more elaborate version of the same idea can be done if the computer plugged directly to an outlet with two sockets too, removing the socket from the wall.
The only time I can forsee vampiring the cable being a thing would be if computer is directly plugged into a single socket outlet on the wall?
> https://youtu.be/erq4TO_a3z8?si=jzOqrzyu7LZLfJIm&t=135
> https://wiebetech.com/products/hotplug-field-kit/