Touch lamp follow-up; energy consumption and also explosions

You should use this as video icon 😅 https://imgur.com/a/qQoEmV4

Tom G

Those wiring colours are familiar to anyone in the UK, as they match the pre-2004 domestic wiring colours. Black is Neutral, Red is Live. If I was handed that unit with no wiring diagram I would wire it live to red, neutral to black and white as the switched live.

David

Patriot Lighting FTW

Galen Thurber

don't triac this at home

Galen Thurber

add conductive grease to that socket all will be fine

Galen Thurber

Could have been Me. I bought one of these modules some time ago but never got around to hooking it up. Every wall timer or dimmer you buy has black as the input and red output, white neutral. What were these idiots thinking?

Paul Malloy

Needs to be released to the general YouTube audience at some point. Explosions always get the views :-)

Jeff Groves

Seems like what you say at the end based on standard colors is exactly what was wrong, swapping live and neutral wouldn't matter but if you put mains between black and white then the triac just shorted the mains when it turned on...

Kilrah

At the very least, it would've been nice if they put the color names directly on the diagram instead of forcing you to look up which is which using the legend on the left. It's a needless extra opportunity to make a mistake.

Jeff Jetton

Big Clive mentioned this video in his Saturday live stream. Even with the bad choice of colours, they should have a label on each wire or printed on the box.

Seán Byrne

Because it's cheaper to make them in China. The same reason everything is made in China.

Chris Crowther

I suspect the person spec’ing the wire colours was more used to low voltage DC circuits, where red for positive and black for ground are common, and just transposed that knowledge to AC mains without realising its different (in many ways, and in many different ways in different countries). Shorting live and neutral with a touch switch sure was exciting though :-) Ewen

Ewen McNeill

I'm just amazed that they use black for hot/live/phase. That sounds like a total recipe for disaster. Red would be so much more logical! Here (Australia/NZ) they use Red for phase, Black for neutral, but for appliance leads, they made an odd choice and chose Brown for phase and Blue for neutral. Green is always used for earth/ground. If I was the chief designer, I would have gone with Blue on leads for a phase, it's a much more visible colour if the lead becomes damaged.

Anton

i wired in a 3 way dimmer switch the other day and it had a green, a red, and two blacks. i had to check the instructions about 10 times and nothing matched the house wiring colorwise. i suspect they want it to be a little intimidating and complicated so most people will give up and call an electrician.

nobody

I’m so looking forward for a collab video from you and ElectroBOOM

Zhenbang Xiao

Ghosts!

CharlieVictor

Loved the video! You should wear safety goggles, the stills from the explosion looked like a lot of hot stuff was flying in all directions! In Finland we have blue for neutral, and primarily black and secondarily brown for hot. Yellow-green for ground/earth.

Jonas

Yeah; gotta say "red" is far more intuitive for "live" or "hot" to me, given the choice of "red" or "black".

Chris Crowther

It IS a power circuit. The triac switches the mains power to the load. The only sensor is the yellow wire.

Mike Bird

You're doing electrical engineering over carpet? Wow, hope you touch metal often.

Stephen Gillie

"Black is the hot lead in North America" - Product is Made in China. Why don't we make these in the USA?

Stephen Gillie

As someone who does a lot more with DC than AC, having red be hot makes a lot of sense. Black is always negative/ground. AC always throws me off because of that.

Nate D

I have some HD DVDs, from when the 360 came out. This system also has a combination CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD drive in from when people were still hedging their bets. I've been using it to rip HD-DVD movies recently....and I'm reminded of the things I liked about HD-DVD, like actually having chapter titles as part of the meta data.

Chris Crowther

ask anyone to link "hot" and "neutral" to "red" and "black" and see what they answer

In the UK, before the current IEC regs, black was neutral and red was live, on mains wiring at least. Socket wiring already used the European colours of blue for neutral and brown for live. Current regs for mains wiring in the UK use the same as the plug leads, in-line with the rest of Europe.

Chris Crowther

I don't see any Zener diodes there, just ordinary 1N4007 und 1N1418s, ups, I saw it wrong, the top one seems to be a Zener... Turning the plug wouldn't have helped much, from a device's perspective, they're just 2 poles serving alternating current, you wired something wrong that made a short circuit on the output, yes, spectacular, made the movie worth more ;-). About the wire colors, from a European point of view I would say: - blue: neutral, to the plug, the lamp and the circuit - brown: live, from the plug to the circuit - black: switched live, from the circuit to the lamp - anything else, maybe yellow: for the touching parts And again: reversing live and neutral should not make any difference, the circuit should be designed in a way that it is safe in both directions BTW: I looked back at the way how you connected it in the first place, the circuit gets then its power through the lamp (an incandescent bulb has almost no resistance when it is cold), so is working. As soon as you switch it on, the black and white leads get connected through the triac, creating a short circuit on the mains.

MrHammond

Red is usually a switched or secondary hot though. Used say, for 3 way switches, combination ceiling fans and lights, or 240v electric outlets and appliances.

Stumblr

Ah, the difference between electric and electronic explained so concisely.

Stumblr

Not the sole reason, but easily the best

Stumblr

Wait, at 11:12, is that an HDDVD box?! Why?!

Stumblr

This particular video is GREAT! Could be the sole reason for Patreon support 🤣

Classic "Electronics guy designed an Electric device" screwup. This happens infrequently (thank goodness) but this is definitely not the first time I've seen it. In the electrical world (in North America) electrical standard is as you state "black is hot, white is neutral", and the hot lead is switched. In the electronics world it's "black is common (ground), red is hot" and the ground lead is switched. I don't know how the color codes got that way, but switching is logical. With electrical, switching the hot is safer. With electronics, switching the common keeps the control electronics near ground potential with only the output device (the triac in this case) having high voltage on it when the circuit is off. At any rate, great video! I'm proud of your cool demeanor (no screams, no blast of expletives).

HarveyB

Now hold the phone here... in DC situations, the black wire *would* be the negative lead, while the red is positive. And since it's a sensor circuit, not a power circuit, I sorta get it. Still dumb, but I get the logic. Maybe it was a way to avoid having two white wires.

Justin Tokke

"Anyone can make a mistake", said the Dalek getting off the trash can. Sorry, British humo(u)r!

Big Car

something something FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER

Quinton Wilson

We bought a house that came with a pair of wall sconces in the dining room. The previous owners realized too late that the wiring to the fixtures was unswitched, yet the replacement sconces they chose did not have switches built-in (like, presumably, the previous ones did). So, they installed those little touch gadgets. The problem is, they like to turn on in the middle of the night, all on their own. So you come downstairs in the morning and find one of the sconces has randomly turned on. Since they're basically just decorative, we just leave the bulbs unscrewed.

Tnarg42

You let out the magic smoke!

CharlieVictor

In this episode of "Disconnected" watch as Alec loses his connection in a flash;) Not that I know anything, but blue seems a more appropriate color than black to connect this device to neutral.

Mark Hesse

China (where the modules were probably made) used different color codes. So does the EU. In the US, Black, Red, or Blue can mean hot, depending upon the phase. It sure shouldn't use black for neutral. I was worried when I saw the original post about polarity. I think you had a demonstration why I was concerned. If you're looking for others who rant about not following color codes, both Big Clive and Pile of stuff have videos like that. I know what you mean, up until at least 1991, when I rewired my last house, I used black to "live" (unswitched) mains hot, white for neutral, red for switched hot, and bare copper or green for ground. But all sorts of changes have gone through since then.

Mike Bird

Nice explosion

Professor Kroog

Sure feels like a classic "Menard's ordered 100,000 units nine years ago, the vendor messed up the wiring on the units, and Menard's sold it anyway" story. That's certainly the way they did things in the 80s and 90s, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to find out they still do.

Kevin Kostka

You do a very good Electro Boom impression!

Michael Dunn

Well, to be fair. Red is also a hot in north america as well. But yeah, black is normally what you think of as hot. Electronics don't really have standard wiring colors though so beware people. Explosion was dope for sure. 10 out of 10 for the for the mostly raw footage.

I once patented one on a PC to turn it on "pushlessly"… Yeah, was too sensitive 🤣

You're awesome So glad in receiving your notifications

Matheus Bitencourt