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Lightning setting off electronic toys

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Proprclr

Jan 1, 1970
0
We are having some pretty severe thunderstorms coming thru Florida
tonight and blinding flashes of lightning...

The kids are in bed and I was sitting downstairs in the den when
lightning hit something near my son's bedroom upstairs. I heard the pop
and saw the flash outside from the window and I ran upstairs and opened
his door to check on him. He was fine, eyes as big as saucers though
(OO) and inside his closet was a voice constantly saying over and over
like a broken record "I love you mommy"-"I love you mommy"-"I love you
mommy".

WTF??

It turned out to be a little teddybear that he has had for years and is
too big for now, that was in a box in his closet and I guess the
lightning set it off.

I had to pull the battery out of it because it wouldn't stop! Normally
you have to either press a contact in his paws to get him to say one
phrase.


Hmmm... As for the technical reason why this happened, either

A: The bear has a "soft" power on controlled by a chip, and some
of the gates inside the chip got tripped and stuck somehow
(the bear's computer chip crashed :)

B: There was enough current induced in the contacts that they actualy welded
together, and thus the bear wouldn't stop talking.
 
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Steven

Jan 1, 1970
0
Proprclr schreef:
<snip; toy is activated by lightning, hangs in infinite loop>

Hmmm... As for the technical reason why this happened, either

A: The bear has a "soft" power on controlled by a chip, and some
of the gates inside the chip got tripped and stuck somehow
(the bear's computer chip crashed :)

B: There was enough current induced in the contacts that they actualy welded
together, and thus the bear wouldn't stop talking.

If there was enough current induced to *weld* contacts together,
wouldn't the wires on and to the chip be affected too?
And probably more dramatic since they are *much* thinner..

Groetjes, Steven
 
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Proprclr

Jan 1, 1970
0
Steven said:
Proprclr schreef:

If there was enough current induced to *weld* contacts together,
wouldn't the wires on and to the chip be affected too?
And probably more dramatic since they are *much* thinner..

Lightning can do very strange things. I've heard of a case where a
nearby lightning strike welded the power switch in a stereo in the
"on" state, but the stereo kept working (that's how the owner found
out what happened :)
 
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Proprclr

Jan 1, 1970
0
A: The bear has a "soft" power on
I'm assuming here that the switch in it's paw actualy just activates a
"gate" inside of a chip in the bear that does the actual switching.
There is also an electronic timer in the bear
that "knows" just how long to keep the bear turned on in order for it to
say it's phrase, and power off when done. (or this could simply be done
with a flag at the end of the digtal voice sample, which tells the bear
to shut off, though I think they used a simple timer here).

If you press the paw, and hold it, but it normaly says "I love you mommy"
only once when you do this, then it's defently was malfunction in the chip
that caused the bear to do what it did. It probaly triggered the gate that
turnes the power on, and screwed up the timer, so that's why it malfunctioned
the way it did.

(this brings up an interesting question: Does the playback firmware have
a counter which icrements the data pointer/address to the voice sample
during playback, that rolls over back to $0000 when done :)
 
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