"Toy" component help please!

A company (Philips maybe?) used to sell these types of bulbs. They have the circuitry built into the base - it's a button in series with the AC. The ones I recall had 3 or 4 levels of brightness based on repeated switch on/off cycles as you describe.

I haven't seen them in years.

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Menards in the midwest sold those bulbs until a couple of years ago. I still have a couple. But, there is something even better out. It is a light dimmer that responds to touch of any metal part of a lamp. The first time you touch any metal part of the lamp, it glows diml;y. Touch it again and it is about 70% of full on, touch it a third time and full brightrness, touch once more and it goes off. The box to do this is about half the size of a regular pack of cigarettes and can be placed into the base of almost any lamp. These touch modules are sold in the sections of hardware stores where they sell the electrical parts to rewire lamps. I put one in my wife's dressing table lamp so she does not have to try to turn a swich with wet nail polish/makeup, etc. just barely touch any metal part of the lamp to control it. The modules are under $10.00 and they have the added feature of coming on dim first so the filament almost never burns out due to turn-on surtge.

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

OK - question.............

The "Touch Lamps" that are normally sold (or were) used to be affected by R.F. - in a lot of cases. When you install these modules, are THEY susceptible to R.F.? Meaning - if your neighbor keys up his CB or Ham, your "touch lamp" will activate itself as though you're touching it to make it go throught its phases.

Lou

For what it is worth, there "was" a recommended cure that "presumeably" did work to cure the "touch lamp" of being triggered by R.F. . Not sure how well - I only read about it - not do any actual mods.

L.

snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote in news:1155006491.252164.273850@

75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com: [snip] [snip]

What is cool about these dimmer on off switches is that you can even put the sense wire into the dirt of a potted plant. Touching any leaves on the plant will activate the lamp switch circuit.

--
~Ohmster

And let the plant figure out how to control the lamp? That's giving a lot of power to the plant! :)

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There's nothing wrong with power plants- we'd be screwed without them ;-)

Dave

Not really. Politicians need lamps to. ;-)

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida