A static electricity surge protector (technically referred to as an electrostatic dissipater) is simply a device for dissipating (discharging) any accumulated static charge you may have on your body to a ground connection. As shown in FIG. 1, when a charged finger having an accumulated charge approaches a grounded object an electrostatic discharge (ESD) event occurs.
The accumulated charge residing on the fingertip first ionizes the air and then immediately flows from the finger (which is viewed as a spark) following the discharge path through the grounded object to ground. The accumulated static charge is completely dissipated to ground within billionths of a second, and the amount of energy contained within the accumulated static charge can easily destroy sensitive electronic circuits.
An example of a simple electrostatic dissipater is a light switch that you intentionally touch or brush up against when you turn-on a light fixture. The mounting screws holding the switch plate are shown in FIG.2.
These screws are normally internally grounded and when you either come into close proximity to or brush up against one or more screws, you discharge yourself through the screw(s) to ground thereby removing any accumulated charge (either positive or negative) at that moment. Unfortunately, this type of discharge is not controlled and you may subsequently experience a painful “shock” from the current flowing in the spark.
Additionally, as you move around performing your normal workplace tasks, you may again accumulate electrostatic charge even after you have previously discharged yourself. For example, just by repositioning yourself on your chair can produce enormous amounts of accumulated charge.
Electrostatic charges may also be produced by shoveling your shoes on the floor (especially rugs manufactured from synthetic materials). To be safe, you need to periodically discharge yourself to maintain a safe electrostatic free workplace environment.
The patent pending BumbleBee electrostatic dissipaters (Models 50, 100, 200 and 300) solve both of these problems by providing internal circuitry to controllably discharge any accumulated electrostatic charge and a programmable alert timer to remind you to discharge yourself by touching the discharge pad located on the top surface of the dissipater as shown in FIG. 3.
Controllably discharging any accumulated electrostatic charge eliminates the painful shock associated with electrostatic discharge events.
The alert timer uses a colored LED (the Timer-LED) and an audible tone (if enabled) to periodically remind the user to discharge themselves by touching the discharge pad.
The period of the alert timer may be manually programmed by the user from 1 to 60 minutes (the default period is 3 minutes). For dissipater models 200 and 300, the alert timer period may also be automatically and continuously programmed depending upon the localized relative humidity. Model 300 also provides a critical relative humidity warning LED (RH-LED).
Simply plug-in the USB jack into the mating USB receptacle on either a grounded computer or the power module and your BumbleBee dissipater will begin protecting your computer, other electronic devices, software and stored data.