electrical endeavors

For those who have recently moved from the US or are planning such a move, a note about the electrical and AV choices I've made and some rationale behind them. I've wasted enough $$ that I wish others don't have to do the same. I'll write about issues to worry about in two categories of things - electrical and video.

Electrical:
The major differences between the US and India are in the following aspects:

1. Voltage and frequency (110V / 60Hz in US versus 240V / 50 Hz in India)
2. Mismatching plugs and sockets (parallel plugs in the US versus round sockets in India)
3. Availability of power
4. Voltage Stability

For the basic voltage compatibility, the equipment determines the solution:

Low Wattage Electronics

If your equipment is low-power electronic equipment, chances are that it has an external power adapter that converts AC to DC. Most of the new adapters handle a wide range of voltages and frequencies, including the Indian one, so you don't have to worry about just plugging in the existing adapter. One very important thing to note is that while there are some sockets available that allow a US style plug to go in (these are commonly fitted in newer buildings), the "earth" hole of the Indian socket is meant for the "earth" pin of the domestic plug, which is bigger than the US earth pin. So sometimes when you plug in a US plug into such a socket, the earth pin won't make contact to the earth wire in the socket and your equipment won't be earthed properly. (I was hooking up my ipod and learned the hard way by getting a strong shock that the earth pin wasn't making contact!)

The older DC power adapters don't support multiple voltages. For such systems, you can get a simple SCR-based power converter (e.g. one made by a company called "Kundip") that attaches to an Indian socket on the one side and provides a US socket on the other side. I bought about 10 of these and found about 5 to be not working from the beginning, and after I used one of the working ones on my "continuously on" Linksys router, after about 6 months, the router started misbehaving. So this solution has been very unreliable for me. Secondly, it is important to note that these converters cannot be used with battery chargers. I tried to use one on my chordless drill and the drill charger blew up the next second (with a bang, smoke and all that.) A better solution here is to actually buy an off-the-shelf DC power adapter that provides the same DC voltage (and max current.) A lot of variety is available here, and depending upon the brand of your equipment (Panasonic, Sony, etc.) you will likely find a compatible power supply that matches the brand of the equipment you have. The best way is to walk into a store that provides such supplies with the existing adapters and get replacement ones. (Note: Most stores which supply these things have "variable pricing" - i.e. they determine the price by looking at how much a customer might be willing to pay, so it's better to call and ask the price in advance of showing up.) Once I started using the local DC converters, things have been working reliably, regardless of the power fluctuations.

The two PCs I had were compatible with the 240 V / 50Hz system, but there was a small slide switch on the power-supply of the PC that I had to physically slide in order for the power supply to work on the higher voltage. I fortunately realized this before I plugged in the PC.

I haven't used the popular variable-transformer based voltage stabilizers for any of this, and even though my house has noticable voltage fluctuations, the PCs, monitors, RAID storage server, printers, etc. (everything that basically converts to DC before the power is used) have worked just fine for the past 9 months or so. The reason I decided not to use such stablizers is that if you look at their response times (which is in a few hundred milliseconds), I'm sure if there was a real surge, it would do much harm before the stabilizer adjusted the voltage. I've instead got two protection mechanisms: One is that the house supply is fitted with an ELCB which will trip instantly if the voltage goes too high, and secondly, in some cases I've used a power-strip that comes with a simple solid-state surge-suppressor. This gives me some level of confidence that the equipment is safe.

Simple Electrical Equipment

This includes microwaves, and other kitchen appliances such as a food processors, Dosa-griddles, etc. We bought quite a few of such equipment. The great thing about these is that they are not so sensitive to voltage fluctuations, with a simple step-down transformer you can hook these up to the regular power sockets. Such transformers are somewhat bulky, but you can use one for all your equipment, since not all of it is on at the same time. Note that if your microwave has a clock, the different frequency will mean that the clock will not work properly in India. I got a transformer like this from Kings Electronics in the Budhwar Peth (Pasodya Vithoba) area. The "variable pricing" rule applies here too.

High-Wattage Electronics

This is the toughest category, because it requires a stable power supply of the right voltage and frequency. I made the mistake of shipping my Plasma TV from the US to here. The solution I created here is to have a custom-built "in-line" UPS which converts the input voltage to DC, charges a battery, and the battery then "in-line" feeds an AC power converter which supplies a constant 110V / 60 Hz, regardless of the input power supply fluctuations. I have used this for my music system and my Plasma TV, both of which are relatively expensive equipment and I didn't want to risk it with the voltage fluctuations. A side-benefit of this strategy has been that we can watch movies even when the power is out. The custom-built UPS cost me about $1,000 but I didn't do competitive bidding here, so I'm sure I could have gotten it for a couple of hundred dollars less.

Video:

There are two considerations for making video equipment compatible in India.

1. NTSC versus PAL video
2. DVD region locks

I had a TV that only took in NTSC (even from composite video), and the satellite provider I use does not support NTSC, so I had to get a converter. I bought a ComWorld CMD 1500 converter for this, with less-than-perfect results. I've heard its pretty much the same with other converters, so my conclusion has been that it was not a good idea for me to ship my TV from the US to here.

The other problem I had to deal with is the video region codes. Fortunately, most bollywood stuff is not region locked, but the hollywood DVDs we bought here refused to play on our systems. There are hacks available to change the region codes for equipment, but those hacks didn't work for us. Our problem was that one of our DVD player was a part of our expensive music system and the other was a part of a gaming system. For now, we've just bought a cheap DVD player locally, and have to switch between the local player and the game system when the kids want to watch a Hollywood DVD. We haven't solved the problem for ourselves (parents) yet. I had bought a AV multiplexer that came in handy for the kids. The TV didn't have enough composite video inputs to support everything that was to be plugged in, so I bought a "multiplexer" (which was basically a simple switch) to switch between the various inputs.

On the move...

Hi guys,

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting an update from me regarding the move, and more than anything else, for the past month or so,sitting at a desk and in front of the computer was not really on my agenda. But now I've settled in to my new apartment, have bought cars, hired a driver, got phones, etc. Diwali is also over along with its distractions, so daily life is less of surprises and more about a routine.

I don't really have a clear verdict, so you might be disappointed if you're looking to find out whether India has been / is "better" for me and my family than the US was. Of course, our decision to move was based on a picture about how life will be in India and how our future might develop, so I can talk about the surprises / disappointments regarding that.

The first thing that I should mention is that in no circumstance can I imagine the move to be a "light" one. It's a huge commitment and a radical step that alters almost every aspect of your life. One can perhaps argue it's really not even the same person that was living in the US before, since so much about him / her has changed as a direct consequence of the radically different environment the person is in when in India. Buying things here and selling off your belongings in the US is an expensive exercise and it's really hard to let go of things there that you've so carefully selected over the years. So if you're considering moving, you better be very sure about it.

At a personal level, things are better for me so far. Life is more"connected", there are a lot of things that I like about being here -and I haven't even started socializing yet. The initial shock of pollution, crowding, traffic, etc. has subsided so given a choice again, I'd quite likely do this again. The same is true for my wife. My younger son (7) has adjusted very well and is quite happy here, but my elder one (10) is still squarely in the "why the hell are we here" camp. He's managing his outlook and emotions very well, but I'm quite sure that deep inside he isn't yet happy with the move.

At a work / career level, I haven't really decided what I'm going to do next. I'm continuing my Internet startup (web2rank) as of now, and it's doing quite well, but it seems somewhat removed from the reality here,so it gives me a little less pleasure than in the US. One thing to note here is that I can definitely feel that the reform oriented nature of the government seems to be unraveling somewhat and parts of government are going back to the "stop everything" mode. IT is still not affected as much, but levels of corruption seem to be rising alarmingly overall (after perhaps some improvement a few years back). This affects the optimism that you see all around and the ultimate"where will my career be 10 years from now" question.

At a social level, I feel very pessimistic and depressed. The kinds of politics, corruption, use of force, media control, education control that the ruling congress party is engaging in is really depressing. It has for the most part probably been the same in India, but now I understand it better I guess. It raises a lot of questions about the future for our kids, and our extended families, etc. I've not paid a lot of attention to all this yet, but knowing that my future is now in India makes me really worried about all this. Ultimately I think about it this way - I've tried moving out of it and in the US I have found myself sitting on the distant sidelines of a vast and rich social playing field. Here, I'm in the thick of a losing battle for almost everything I like, but at least I'm a small part of it and there are a lot of people like me to share the joys and sorrows of it all.

All in all, India is right now in a state of massive change. Right down to personal decisions about what is right and wrong, everything seems to be in question - and the younger generation is at the bleeding edge (our kids being a part of it). It was amazing that while we received a lot of warm welcomes upon our arrival here, very few said "welcome back home" - people mostly said "welcome to India". I wondered why, and I concluded that the place has changed so much it doesn't feel like home to anyone here either!