Posts by Stoneshop

Re: Olde Skool

Geissler tubes make nice tree ornaments too.

Re: Live and neutral

Technically it would be safe to touch the 'live' wire while in free fall

At the end of that fall you now have two problems, though. Maybe not so much when landing on a large enough stack of styrofoam or similar.

or otherwise disconnected from the 'neutral' wire. You still shouldn't try it though.

There's birds[0] sitting on power lines all the time.

[0] except storks and similar, obviously.

Re: The user replied: "The same electrician who changed that plug rewired my house last week!"

(Why didn't the builders of this Regency town house, two hundred years ago, bother to put in extra sockets eh?)

There's a house for sale that should suit you.

The IKEA Öffice product line

should include the Pårtitiön.

And there will be much rejoicing.

Now, I guess a commentard with an August birthday probably would be a Leo-tard ......

I'm so not going to tweet pictures.

Re: What really nagged at me was...

Bayonet sockets also have live pins at the bottom, so little difference in safety there.

It used to be that the thread in an E27 was connected to one of the supply wires (so could be live if you lived in Schuko-land), but nowadays there's a contact lip deeper in the socket, and the thread on the bulb only touches that when you've screwed it in nearly all the way. So the thread in an empty socket is not connected to either wire, and with a bulb screwed far enough in that it touches the side contact its thread is fairly well covered by the socket already. Far enough so that it's hard to accidentally touch the thread unless you have very slim fingers.

Re: SMS

Broken mechanically, not electrically. Those switches controlling each socket don't break the ring either, they sit between the ring and the actual socket. Exactly where you would have the relay contacts.

Re: SMS

You still run low quality strings of mains powered lights through dead, drying fuel full of accelerant?

Nope. Low-voltage LED lighting in a non-dead fir.

Re: Hardware isn't necessarily dead

two large chests of drawers at the last count,

Piker.

Two workshop carts, a five-shelf storage rack for the power tools, a large workman's carrying bag for the electricity tool stuff, and a few workbench drawers with bits and bobs like a glue gun, an air wrench and a riveter.

I don't like working that hard.

I don't either, but like any sysadmin I'd rather spend a few hours automating a dumb task than actually performing that task, even it would need to be done once.

I have the advantage that my house was basically two large workshops, an office, pantry, two toilets and a shower, and I'm basically starting from scratch concerning nearly all infrastructure. Not only electrics, but also plumbing and heating. So I decided to put in an autonomous home control system, with switches, sensors and relays connected by a two-wire bus. It's not yet that advanced now, but it still has made the energy-carrying wiring a fair bit simpler. It can also control heating, both the boiler as well as the individual radiators and underfloor heating, the sunscreen and a few more such items.

Re: Of course

The largest is that it used a proprietary protocol, making integration with other automation devices seriously problematic

Butbutbut, then people would be able to buy Other Stuff and have it work, instead of buying it all from Den.

IoT devices that require the manufacturer's active support in order to continue functioning are simply brain dead. It's unnecessary, risky, and provides no actual benefit to the user.

Revolver's spiel was that you could build complex interactions between the sensors, switches, actuators and stuff installed at your house, all in the Cloud and with just an app on your phone or tablet. Which they touted as ease of use and not having to maintain your own server. Of course that required a subscription which would guarantee a steady income for Revolver, preferable (to them) to selling just the bits of hardware.