Lightning strike = baked Pi

I don’t know if there’s a practical way to test whether your surge protection actually works, but Friday we had a very close by lightning strike that fried my Pis power supply.

It was connected to a power strip with surge protection, connected to a GFC outlet. The Pi itself and FA Pro stick were unaffected, so this came through the power feed. Nothing else in the home affected.

Either the surge protector was failed or the event took it out. I used to think that these devices were either dead/ not dead, but learned that they can run degraded and leave you thinking you have protection when you don’t. Link below has some good info. Disclaimer- its got the usual Amzn affiliate marketing link stuff blah blah

https://www.techhive.com/article/3172540/home-tech/best-surge-protector.html

usually a protection works up to the boundary values ​​of the absorbed energy.
Often protection works once

the other day there was a lightning strike nearby. this tripped-off the house surge protector
(no electricity at all for few minutes) preventing damage to PCs, so after resetting it, everything worked normally.
but the power strips unless they have a fuse sometimes do fail.

Stay away from the ones with extra stuff like ethernet ports, USB ports, RF jacks… once the strip reaches end of life it needs replacing and all those extra ports were just wasted money. You want the simplest one you can get that’s a good brand and has a protection indicator.

The primary protection against lightning surges over Power & Communication lines are the Surge Protectors installed at service entry points of these services.

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