Review on Basement Watchdog BWC1 Switch Controller by Tingate Skrbec

I installed mine and it worked fine but after seeing crash reports I decided to do a colonoscopy on this device. Here's what I found. In fact, this block has only 1 microcircuit, 1 relay and 2 transistors. After measuring the voltage, I found that 16.55 volts appeared on pin 8 of the microcircuit power supply. The IC's nominal supply voltage is 5-15 VDC, with 16 VDC being the absolute maximum. The relay has a 12V, 14.5V DC coil. All my measurements were made at a mains voltage of 125 VAC. This is important as there is no voltage regulator in the design so actual voltages will vary depending on the value of the incoming line voltage as well as whether the relay is active or not. I have since modified my block to lower the operating voltage below the components maximum rating. When the IC supply voltage exceeds the maximum value, I'm not surprised why some people see early failure. I wouldn't worry if your line voltage is less than 115VAC as long as it's much higher. tic tok! I also added a 1 megohm potentiometer in series with resistor R4. This gives an adjustable delay time from 10s to 1min. This change was suggested by another reviewer and works great.