SCHURTER, announced the capability of integrating a fiberglass light pipe as an optional feature to its popular appliance outlets. The light pipe provides operational or other function status indication in power distribution units (PDUs). It is designed to channel light from LEDs on the pc board to the front of the connector.

The new technology offers flexible design options including the number of light pipes, 1-4, as well as options for light pipe lengths and diameters. The flexibility of design allows for efficient customer-specific solutions while enabling increased opportunity to signal status information from the power grid to the user.

The light pipes installed in the outlet are designed to channel light coming from LEDs mounted on a printed circuit board to the surface of the outlet. Each outlet generally has its own circuitry and, depending on the complexity of the monitoring system, may offer several types of indicating functions. The outlets are capable of providing up to four light pipes, one in each of the four corners of the connector. The side of the outlet with the ground pin provides extra space around the two corners, allowing for the most prominent and thus popular position.

A typical application consists of power distribution units used in data centers. Today, these units are most likely to have monitoring systems with indicating display panels or controls. These display panels are often centrally located. With SCHURTER’s new appliance outlet, it becomes easier to extend the systems monitoring capabilities from the centralized display to each outlet.

Service technicians are able to clearly see which systems are working properly, or respond to required maintenance adjustments. A connector could, for example, signal an outage with a red LED, or a critical power consumption pattern with a yellow LED. In this way, both repairs and preventive maintenance can be done more simply and efficiently.

SCHURTER
www.schurter.com