This looks almost like Loss
Don’t look into the plumbing
My parents have this, and some of the switches control window shutters, some lights. All identical.
Those outlets are mildly scary.
Everything about electricity in India is scary.
Is that a landlord special paint job, followed by a two different approaches that were ineffective but still obvious (and who knows how many other non-obvious) attempts to fix the landlord special paint job, followed by just giving up?
Or maybe the scratches are labels and not attempts to scratch all the paint off? L for “light” and the rest open secret doors in some sort of video game level complex?
This was just a small restaurant in Hyderabad. I also think the L is for lights, but I didn’t play around with the switches to find out.
hotel rooms
fucking hotel rooms!
Never noticed an issue with LEDs. Those CFLs though.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink blink.
Bzzzzzzz…
That blinking is a good thing. That means that the bulb is running on a pre-heat starter, which gets the electrodes hot before sending full voltage through the fixture. This greatly extends the light’s lifespan. The modern “rapid start” and “instant start” starters just do the shotgun approach of forcing a ton of voltage through the tube, which succeeds in instantly starting it but also blasts off some of the emissive coating on the filaments. A tube running on one of those starters will fail a lot faster and the ends of the tubes will blacken quickly from the coating.
I heard and felt this comment at the same time. Bravo! 👏
[Dim]
[Little less dim]
[Still dim]
[Can see a bit through the dimness]
[Functional but still dim]
“Fuck it I’ll ignore it”
[5 minutes later] “Hey I can see.”
Don’t forget about the crappy color temperature/color rendering index until they finished warming up.
The real issue with this picture is not the “user experience”, unless it is a hotel or some public place where customers are intended to interact with the devices.
The real issue is that the switches and plates aren’t lined up right.
the switches and plates aren’t lined up right
If that bugs you, don’t look at those screws. So close to perfectly lined up, but not quite.
You need the red card key.
Yeah, I immediately thought it was rich for Carmack to be complaining about hunting around to see what unlabeled switches do
Pretty sure its the integrated drivers that cause the delay with LEDs lighting up. Better than the case 5-10 years ago though, where we still needed external drivers to make them work - now you just run your line voltage straight to the sockets. Much easier on the electricians.
That is a crappy switch placement, though. A little more planning would’ve fixed that. Nothing stopping you from getting a label maker though.
And it’s often on purpose because the driver is smoothing out the mains input and/or supports dimmers. A tiny delay is worth it to have an LED that doesn’t flicker
You really don’t want a bargain bin LED where the driver is just a half bridge rectifier and a resistor in series with the LED
And it’s better than the old crappy energy-saving bulbs that emitted pure darkness for a minute when you turned them on.
Yeah i dont miss CFLs
I have two identical light switches in the kitchen right next to eachother but one does the garbage disposal it is so fucking annoying.
That reminds me of Macs circa 1990. The disk drive had no eject button (because of course it was perfectly intuitive to drag the disk icon onto the fucking trash can icon to eject) but the computer’s power button was helpfully located right above the disk drive, so I was constantly powering off my computer whenever I just wanted to eject a disk.
My university had a bay of Macs in the IT suite with laminated cards taped over the power button to warn newbies of this.
If the switches don’t match I’m triggered. Some small label or abbreviation on the plate might be ok though.
Or little icons that match the style of the plate would be cool. I’m thinking about getting these for the ceiling fans:
My favorite is when one of the switches does nothing you can visibly see and you never find out what it’s for.
No shit, an old house I moved into had about half the lights just hard wired to mains so they were always on. They had the switch runner in the box, but it wasn’t connected when I moved in so the switches did nothing. The previous tenants just screwed and unscrewed the bulbs (I rewired them correctly).
Still to this day I will lay in bed and wonder how in the ever loving fuck this happened, who did it, what they were thinking, if it was intentional, and then come to the terrifying realization that the person or people involved in this are probably still out there somewhere, operating motor vehicles on public roads, putting us all in danger. They probably even think they are smart. I mean they do their own electrical work after all.
What I want to know is what is the science called of placing outlets and switches exactly where furniture goes?
You’ve heard of the Chinese art on Feng Shui? The Chinese art of locating outlets and switches in places that get covered by furniture is called Fook Uho. Every interior designer studies that.
Positioning outlets so that furniture hides them is good design. If it’s one of the very few that you’re going to plug and unplug regularly, you’re supposed to permanently plug in a $5 extension cord, and leave the cord concealed behind the piece of furniture, with the end ready to be pulled out when needed.
The majority of those $5 extension cords are generally a fire waiting to happen. They are useful if you plug nothing more than a lamp in to one. Nor should one just leave them lay about on the floor, behind furniture or not.
Source: retired firefighter that has been to more than one electrical caused house fire as 2am.
I just use speaker cable and skin the ends with my teeth and jam the ends in the outlet.
What the actual fuck lmao.
Screw haunted houses, this is a real cursed house
I bought my house two years ago and it had been retrofitted with baseboard radiators. They covered up the lower receptacles in every outlet so you could only get a plug into the top one and then the wire ran over a hot radiator. Just mind-boggling that anybody could do that and not see a problem with it. Granted, the outlets were embedded in the cinderblock walls so it wasn’t an easy matter to move them up, but laziness kills.
For good measure, these plugs were not grounded and they all had the polarity reversed.
Oooo! The Landlord’s cousin special!
My brother lives in an apartment with one of those. We only found out it’s supposed to go to a ceiling light when I moved into the same complex, and my place had the same switch
Till some guy in Germany calls you and tells you to cut it out.
Merry Christmas and a Happy 1985.
Had one of those. Eventually figured out that a prior owner had a lamppost in the yard. How did I figure that out? I found the buried romex. Not conduit. Romex.
I’m no electrician and even I know that you don’t bury Romex lmao. Good lord.
There is direct burial cabling, so that could have been it. (Not Romex branded, but same thing)
Huh, TIL.
I don’t think they want my European curiosity
It’s beautiful 🥹
It’s just grey colored 3-4 conductor cabling.
I still like putting it in conduit so you don’t have to worry about someone hitting it with a shovel.
You see it under porches and decks with power outlets a lot too.
There’s always one that needs to be turned on for any of the other switches to function, too.
Who the fuck does electrical wiring around you guys’ parts?
Americans
Lowest bidder Americans.
Uh … Have you seen the crews that build houses?
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That first one might actually be it. There’s an old motion light on that side of the house that I still need to change out. Good call.
or fan/light switches but no light kit was installed with the fan
Or no fan was installed with the light.
I was going to get smug about how I was diligent enough to blank off the switch when I removed my garbage disposal, but then I remembered I have switches that do nothing in my fanless bedrooms.
There’s a light-switch in my flat that has a red light in the fitting that illuminates when you switch it on. It doesn’t turn on any light in the place. I have no ideas what is for. As a Steven Wright fan, I flick it on and off occasionally hoping I get a call from some woman in Germany saying “cut it out.”
My bet is that it is for some appliance you can’t hear or see turning on. Possibly a power outlet in a weird place for permenantly installed appliances
I leave it turned off and it doesn’t seem to affect anything, and I’m in a small 1 bedroom flat without any appliances that it might connect to. It really is a mystery.
Possibly for the kitchen, like a light tgat ypu could mount under the cupoards or for a vent
Nope. It’s nowhere near the kitchen, and my place isn’t that sophisticated. It’s in the living room in the same vicinity as the switches for that and two lights in the garage. I thought it might be for something in the garage, but I haven’t found anything that it affects in there.
I’m starting to enjoy this guessing game we’ve got going.
That was my guess because the flat I live in (80s East German) has one just like that.
Living room could mean that there was the idea of a light for a dining table. Otherwise a power socket outside, on the terrace for example or an outside light? Garage door opener maybe?
If you really want to find out, I think you’ll need to “play” around with your safety box and that particular switch
Maybe a porch or outside light.
Nope. I know where the switch for that is.
It’s the switch for the red light, of course. Installed by the previous tenant, named Roxanne.
She didn’t have to put on the red light.
Many rooms in my place have light switches tied to outlets. Usually just a single switched plug per room. I know where they all are now but it would have been good if there was a little light icon on each plug.
Still, now that I know, I’m not sure I actually want to add that icon, since I know where it is and I’ll either plug in a light (in which case I know easily) or I won’t (in which case I don’t care).
Some electricians install the receptacles upside-down if they’re switched.
Label makers exist, John.
Lol piss off a lemming somewhere?
Probably. I’m kinda a bitch.
Lol glancing at your profile I imagine your actions may have been warranted. Lots of twats on .ml.
I’ve met some decent ones from there that can have a conversation. But they are few and far between.
I dunno. Might have taken it too far a few times.
I blocked all of .ml to keep myself from seeing and replying to them. Best thing I’ve ever done on Lemmy.
Just wait until he discovers how some people configure smart switches.
One press turns the lights on. A long press turns them on dimly. Two presses turns the lights on in the staircase. Three presses…
The first two are good. I love hold-to-dim. But a switch should only control one thing.
If you don’t have Bluetooth you can access them via morse code.
BCD
When I bought my house, one of the lights was a dumb switch, but smart bulb. Normally, it works like a normal light. But if you turn it on, off, on quick enough, it changes color temperature!
That’s just a typical videogame puzzle: figure the correct combination to open the door, or turn on the correct lights
I wanted to make a joke about doom just being a shooter, using his “video game stories are like porn” quote, but honestly the originals are pretty damn puzzley
