Fire Alarm to switch power off?

[fragged]

Hey

I'm planning to run a server next year whilist at boarding school (so i can leech some linux ISO's xD) and one thing I fear is fire

These servers will be a P3-800 s370, and a P3-450, hopefully running a WD2000 (200gb) via USB.

The thing I fear is hardware malfunction, honestly if one of these systems blows up and leaks magical goo i dont really care, but I dont want to find out that my parents house burnt down because of a server I installed.

I'm wondering, are there smoke detecters that are somehow connected to a powerboard and will turn everything off once it detects smoke, i'm in australia if anybody knows of one that is sold in australia, otherwise its just a bit of knowlege i'd like to have to not look as much of a fool when asking at a local electronics shop.

thanks
-fragged

[dgrmkrp]

..you could buy a smoke alarm and mod it instead of it (solely) beeping.. u could install some kind of relay to work as a power button when the smoke alarm goes off, it makes the loop whole and after 4 secs.. voila pc turned of.. or use a big relay to instantaniously cut the ac power input... just suggesting

[jdbnsn]

I wonder if you could use this and replace the LED with a voltage activated switch to short the power pins?

http://www.mutr.co.uk/prodDetail.aspx?prodID=1220

[Timoi]

If you want to prevent fire then a smoke detection system may be too late. Smoke could be caused by a fire and therefore turning the computer off would do nothing if the fire is already started. What you would most probably want to look at is limiting the temperature or something.

I don't remember... Did P3s have the option of turning off when the CPU passes a certain temperature? If not what you may want to rig up is a thermostat or something similar. It would also help prevent the system from blowing up and leaking some magical goo (lol) even though you don't care about that...

[CanaBalistic]

I seriously doupt that anything will happen. Just run the machine for a few hours while making it do somthing. If it's running fine after that then it should be good to go.

[jdbnsn]

Yeah I agree with Cana, after thinking about it for a while it seems like overkill and most motherboards have temp shutdown anyways. Fire seems unlikely.

[fragged]

If you want to prevent fire then a smoke detection system may be too late. Smoke could be caused by a fire and therefore turning the computer off would do nothing if the fire is already started. What you would most probably want to look at is limiting the temperature or something.

When components die generally they go smokey, get hotter and eventually explode, I plan to have a smoke alarm that beeps as well, so its an extra prevention method ontop of noise.

And however unlikely it could be to happen, wasting < $50 is better than a home full of centimentals...

I now guess that this type of thing hasnt been done, Would anybody be able to provide a schematic that envolves rewiring the beepy thing on an alarm... from what I understand you can get comopents that have a gate that stops/starts voltage when its getting charge through another gate (i'm noob to electronics) similar to this http://www.hackaday.com/2006/08/29/sms-remote-control/ although I think thats using a PIC controller...

I plan to learn PIC programming and soldering in the summer, hopefully, so after that i might have another go at this...

also, can anyone recommend any good electronics books or anything, havnt been able to find any books on the net about it (I like to try before I buy)

-fragged

[DaveW]

PIC Microcontrollers are easy. If you're going to be learnign during the summer, when i'll have plenty of free time, give me e-mail and i'll help you out with it.

I'm a big PIC fan.

-Dave

[Redundant]

This seems like a good idea and something similar to this is almost definitely in use by big companies' server rooms. What I would like to know is what will happen if it catches on fire and no one is home? Better yet, what do companies with servers do if there is a fire?; vacuum seal the room? Perhaps have a fire extinguisher somehow hooked to a servo which is hooked to the smoke detector thing?
P.S. I hope I'm not making you paranoid about PC's catching on fire. lol

[Omega]

I can tell you from experience, there are no servo-controlled fire extinguishers in big server rooms. I've been inside about 3 of them (pretty big ones) but i don't know what they do about a fire.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're worried about it, i'm pretty sure the flames would contain themself inside the case for the most part then die down pretty quickly after they got through things to burn.