Author Topic: Xenon flasher for electric fence  (Read 8231 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Xenon flasher for electric fence
« on: February 07, 2014, 03:11:53 pm »
Attached is a photograph of an Xenon flasher for an electric fence. The red wire goes to the fence 'live' wire and the green to an earth rod. The Xenon tube flashes with each electrical pulse. I have partly worked out the circuit and connected components where this can be observed.

Can anyone else identify the components and the circuit links?

Dave

Edit note: There is a dark patch on the PCB which 'might' be another part associated with the trigger of the tube.

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2014, 04:15:19 pm »
There is a chance that Gallagher may have discontinued the G505 electric fence Live Lite because it does not feature in the latest brochure.

See this PDF  http://www.gallagherusa.com/files/Gallagher-USA-Catalog-0913.pdf

Instead they show a Live Fence Indicator Model G51100 which uses LED's.

I have sent them an e-mail to ascertain the current position and will post the reply when it arrives.

Dave

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2014, 04:43:35 pm »
Just as I thought, here is the e-mail reply:-

David,

The Live Lite was replaced by the Live Fence Indicator.  G51100 is the part number and it can be found and purchased on our website.

Thank You!
Gallagher Customer Service

For the time being I am giving up making this circuit.

I shall concentrate on the LED type flasher because I made a working prototype about one year ago.

Dave

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2014, 04:01:10 pm »
Correction.

The new model Live Lite does not use batteries and takes its power from the fence pulse with another connection to ground.

Whether or not the new model is using Xenon tubes or LED's is very difficult to determine.

Dave

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #4 on: February 18, 2014, 03:28:05 pm »
I have been studying the PCB and concentrating on the white text. Below is a mark up on what I can observe. It is interesting to note that the capacitor is clearly marked as C2, so the question is where is C1? I now suspect that other parts are on the hidden side of the PCB and may consist of:- one more capacitor and the trigger coil unit. After much research on the Internet I have not found one single Xenon tube that does not have a trigger coil in the circuit diagram.

Anyone care to comment?

Dave

Offline rossw

  • Senior Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 879
  • Karma: +35/-0
  • Grumpy-old-Unix-Admin
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2014, 10:33:47 pm »
1. Hard to tell from the photo, but it's POSSIBLE that the device is capacitively coupled to the fence.
This could easily form "C1" from their perspective.

2. The fence quite likely already has more than enough volts to trigger a xenon tube. Depending on how they go about it, it's quite possible they don't actually NEED a trigger transformer!

Offline David HK

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 250
  • Karma: +21/-0
  • No Personal Text Set by User
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #6 on: February 18, 2014, 10:47:40 pm »
Ross,

You're probably correct on the second paragraph. I am in contact with a fellow in the US of A who seems to know a good deal about these circuits and he makes a similar observation to you.

I will try to obtain a circuit schematic from him and build it to see what happens.

Dave


Offline eidolon

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 53
  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Xenon flasher for electric fence
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2021, 10:10:03 am »
Wow, way old but an interesting design.  It appears that multiple fence charger pulses are used to charge up the capacitor.  When the voltage is high enough on the tube, the trigger wire will initiate the flash. For those fence chargers that are powerful enough to cut blades of grass.