But you dont really care 'bout voltage, do ya?
It goes like this, on the the 25th. A minor shock? No. Death madeshift.
The baffled men are meeting now their maker.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
Also known as a "nope rope"
We call them a Deadman's cable up here, and sadly they're still quite frequently used in the northern rural areas because it costs almost $2,000 to have a dedicated bypass switch installed(generator hookup) so nobody does it, they just throw the Main and hope they don't put too much stress on the internal lines.
Is it legal? Hell no but they do it anyway
I did this.
Is it stupid? Yes. Did it work? Also yes. For the amount of time that we'd have power out, it was just way to easy to throw a breaker and connect it like this just to keep a small heater and a light running. If I had the money at the time I would have loved battery backup/ bypass but this cost $2 and an old cord.
The lord chord
Hymnnn
I thought this was an anti homosexuality meme until I read the top comment.
I've got to stop using Lemmy. It is changing me...
I too have developed into a very politically correct person with lemmy, I kinda miss being able to make gay jokes
I heard there was a secret cord.
you plug it in to meet the lord.
But you don't really care for safety, do ya?
It goes like this, you plug it in,
And in a flash, the lights go dim,
The power's gone,
and now it’s running through ya.Beautiful
Amazing, I got like two lines in on my own and gave up but you did it you beautiful mind
They very much do exist, though. Often used sketchily with generators.
How do you non-sketchily feed a generator's power into your home?
You get a qualified tradesperson to wire it properly into your electrical distribution.
Technical details and the social contract mandate that your generator is never connected to the main power grid. The generator should be wired to an enclosed AC transfer switch. This switch will connect either the generator or the main grid to your home, but never both.
Some detail: If the generator is wired to the main grid it can prevent restoration of main grid power. While an AC transfer switch will perform the task, many jurisdictions mandate additional safety precautions (which can be quite expensive).
The proper way of doing it is using what's called a generator bypass switch, basically it's a physical switch that runs before your fuse box, and it makes it impossible to have both the main and the generator being fed at the same time, so you can either have the main on or you could have the generator on. This prevents the electricity from your generator back feeding into the line and killing a line worker trying to restore power.
Sadly, like the other comments have said people tend to use these male to male cables in order to not have to pay the $2,000 to install the switch and instead choose to just turn the main breaker off and plug that cable in. But since it's possible to have both the main and the generator on it's not legal because if you forgot to throw the Main or if you did it incorrectly you could be putting workers at risk
Even disregarding the safety risk of using such a cable, not having a dedicated switch installed also means that you're plugging your generator into usually an outside socket of the house, and those power lines aren't usually meant to have a high load so you risk creating a fire from over straining the line as well
There are electrical panel accessories that automatically isolate the house
The real way is a generator inlet, which is a male plug that's interlocked with the main. So the cord ends up being a normal male/female cord
Lol this dude never turned hydro into diesel! Look at this guy!
Modern inverters do this somewhat safely by sensing the phase before outputting power.
Of course, you can’t tell just by looking, so I still would steer clear of the whole thing on principle.
No problem.
I got these baddies
Looks pretty weak sauce. I use jumper cables.
Memories. Me and my friends used to zap eachother with these before social media made everyone into cowards
It didn't take the internet for people to be fearful and cautious around high voltage...
All I got to zap was myself.
I'm not American, Christmas lights aren't a thing here like they're in the US, can someone explain?
Strand of exterior lights, one end male plug one female. Idiots start to mount the lights with the female end near their outlet. Get done, become confused, go to store for male to male cord to plug into female end.
The female end is for chaining multiple strands, not for supplying power (directly) from the power socket.
The power can go through the female end just fine, that’s not the problem. The problem is people plug this “suicide cable” into the wall first, thus creating a 120v taser of sorts. Like someone else in this thread said, the only problem from cables like that is people tend to try to backfeed energy into the system with a generator or solar panels. Boom.
Aaah, gotcha! Thank you!
A strand of christmas lights resembles an extension cord, but they tend to be made of smaller gauge wire and obviously have little sockets for tiny light bulbs spaced along them. They typically have 2-prong male plug on one end, often with a 2-prong female pass through on the back so you could plug more than one strand into the same receptacle, and they usually end in a female plug so they can be daisy chained.
Sometimes, when installing them on a house or something, the person installing them may not pay attention to which direction is which, and end up installing them so that the female-only end is near where they intended to plug them in. So instead of pulling them down, or running a long extension cord, they go to the hardware store looking for a male-to-male plug adapter.
Power plugs and sockets are gendered for a very good reason; the female receptacle keeps the energized contacts protected inside, and the male plug's contacts should only be energized when plugged in and their outer shells protect them. A male-to-male cable when one end is plugged in and the other is free now has exposed mains current just waving around in the open air ready to kill someone. And, on a smaller note with christmas lights, they usually have a fuse built into the plug, and plugging them in backwards bypasses this for at least the first strand, so it's technically 102.7% unsafe to do this.
The other thing a male-to-male adapter or cable is sometimes used for is to attach a portable generator to your home's electrical system by just plugging it into an outlet, especially during a power failure. They do make what are essentially special male receptacles I think mainly for the RV industry for attaching generators like that, most houses won't have these. Plugging it into a normal wall socket will actually work, but 1. you have bypassed the breaker panel, so the breakers no longer provide over-current protection. You could overheat the wires in the walls and burn down the house. 2. there's a possibility that you're feeding electricity to the entire house through the breaker box and even out to the transformer, which means the lines could be energized for linemen working on them. Throwing the main breaker might prevent that? They make switching gear designed for buildings with their own backup generators that can either manually or automatically sever their connection to the grid when on internal power, but again a doofus trying to make one of these cables probably doesn't have one of those.
Outstanding, thank you for this
Wow. I had no idea. Thank you for educating me.
Their lights usually have a plug on one end and a socket on the other. Ppl put them around the exterior of their hoses, then realise they did it the wrong way, and the socket end is near the outlet they wanted to plug them in.
Or they mounted two strands of lights, and where they meet up it’s either 2 plugs or two sockets accidentally.
/But hardware stores don't want to sell it tooooo youuu..../
/...tooo ya.../
Practical IQ test with binary result ("pass"/"fail").
My dumbass made one by accident. Plugged it in, walked to the other end, picked it up my saw, "Shit. How did I throw the wrong end out here?" Whatever, we've all strung the extension cord backwards before. Here come the IQ test.
Walked to the other end of the cord, yanked it and threw that end back out into yard, plugged it in. Went back to my saw, "Oh for fuck's sake!"
bruh moment
as someone who has strung a ton of lights the wrong way around on more than one occasion... I can understand the desire for some magic solution that doesnt require undoing and redoing your work..
but fuck, You don't mess around with electricity.
People also make these stupid suicide cables to plug generators into houses during disasters, often backfeeding power into the lines that may be down and can cause serious injury to workers trying to restore power.
FYI, you can just turn off the main breaker of the residence to prevent backfeeding into the power lines.
Yeah, there is a reason why proper installations require actual transfer switches or at least a manual interlock to prevent both feeds being connected at the same time. I'm also not sure what would happen if your generator was out of phase with the grid when it reenergised, but I'm sure it wouldn't be good
If your generator was connected to mains when they came back on it would probably just kill your generator. It is the least robust device in the chain. The next step is blowing up the transformer on the pole which is a spectacular light show. It is also very expensive, and will piss off your entire neighborhood who were just about to get power back and now have to wait for the power company to fix the transformer you blew up by being a dumb ass. Finally it is possible that you would trip out the switch yard which is going to make even more people angry. The biggest risk is you putting power back on the lines that people are working on. That transformer on the pole works both directions. It drops the usual 13.8kV on your local power lines to the 240/120V in your house. It will also turn the 120/240 from your generator into 13.8 on the lines that are being worked on. 13.8 will kill you before you even know you touched it. That is why line workers go through multiple tests before they get near lines they are working on. They will notice there is power on lines that are supposed to be dead. They will find where that power is coming from. They will fine you lots of money. There may be criminal charges.
Just use 2 paper clips and some duct tape, problem solved!
I've used a suicide cord before in some rare instances. When I was finished I immediately took it apart.
I used to use one to get power into my popup camper...
Where was the power originally suppose to come in? They make power "Inlets" for that sort of thing. This one is designed with an Interconnect Switch for hooking into a system with Mains, but a camper with outlets should just have a inlet somewhere.
You didn't do it right...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-4mvK2FW78
Plugging the cord in the same outlet isn't dangerous itself, but the prongs will be live on the end that's not plugged in, I'd suggest not touching them. Where it IS dangerous is when people try to use them with a generator to back feed their panel. Don't do that.
On the one hand, there are legitimate uses for double ended male cords. On the other, absolutely none of those legit uses invovle christmas lights
You gotta lick it after you plug it in so you know it's working.
Teehee, it tingles!
It's also good to backfeed a generator into an outlet
My old boss had one, for when power went out, he could back feed from his car to the house. I never touched it.
Good thing you never touched it. What your boss did is possible and if he really understands what he is doing and is not connected to the grid then he can do it. But for any ordinary homeowner absolutely do not try this. You could burn your house down or even worse kill some poor lineman/electrician working on the problem somewhere else on the grid who isn't expecting the equipment he's working on to go live out of nowhere.
I don't really get it. Sure, the exposed prongs would be energized once you plugged one side in, but if you plugged the other side into a second outlet (assuming you didn't cross live/neutral), nothing would happen. (those two outlets were likely tied together anyway)
You don't work around dangerous things assuming you'll never make a mistake, you work around dangerous things assuming you'll never make three mistakes at the same time.
You are not immune to making one (or more) mistakes, no matter how careful you think you are.
Correction: you don't work around dangerous things assuming you'll make a mistake long
The problem really is the super exposed hot prong you now have once you plug one end in
In addition to the exposed prongs, it also means you are passing current into a circuit of unknown capacity without using a safety breaker. You may also be back feeding into your neighborhood power grid and can kill people in the street/other houses that were not expecting the lines to be energized.
50-50 chance whether those two outlets are on the same phase or opposite phases; if it's the latter, congrats, that's a 240V short.
Besides, if there's an outlet at the far end of your string of lights, you don't need this, you just plug it in there
Two things: 1: there's a high chance you do cross live and neutral, or even live and live on different phases. 2: using it to plug in a generator to power your house can kill electrical workers who are trying to restore a power outage. (If you fail to open your circuit breaker.)
Double live is very bad and the cord becomes a literal short. If you're lucky a breaker will flip or fuse burn out. If you're not so lucky you have a cable thats either going to start a fire burning its insulation off and melting itself, or potentially exploding depending on quality and type of cable.
Why would you "need" one of these if you could plug in the other end into a second outlet? The point is that idiots don't plan out their christmas light layout and end up with the wrong end at the outlet. They decide that they would rather drive to the hardware store and buy/build a suicide cable rather then just taking the lights down and rehanging them or running an extension cord to where the male end of the lights are.
... but you don't really care for logic do ya?
You can also use them to test the voltage, similar to testing a 9v battery.
aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh lic-
i guess if someone's putting up their lights backwards, then it makes sense that that person also thinks it's less work to drive to the hardware store and buy a non-existent extension cord than it is to just redo the lights
Darwin cable.
So if these are people wiring their Christmas lights wrong, assuming these are led lights, doesn't this "solution" not work bc of the polarity anyway? Or is that only a DC thing with diodes? I only did okay in my physics electricity stuff lol
For simple stuff such as those lights, polarity is usually not a problem when using AC.
In case of AC (Alternating Current), instead of having a + and - pole, you have a Line and a Neutral terminal.
The Line terminal goes + ... - ... + ... - ... + ... - with time and the Neutral stays at 0.
When connecting to LEDs and such, you have an AC to DC converter, which tends to be fine no matter which pin you put in which hole.
Edit for clarity: I am talking only about the specific appliance in this case, having a 2 pin plug. When doing home wiring, polarity matters a lot.
In household wiring polarity does matter, especially if you are assembling plugs. Only one of the three wires is carrying live current (hot), the other two are the neutral return path, and ground which is for safety. If you accidentally switch polarity, you can cross hot to neutral and cause a short circuit.
No, alternating current doesn’t have a polarity like DC does.
It would still work. But it is VERY dangerous. 1. The far end of the light string will now have exposed metal prongs that are energized at 120v, which can be fatal. 2. If the other end gets plugged into a socket, there is a 50% chance it will be a different circuit on a different phase, which can create a 240v direct short, across a wire that has no properly sized circuit breaker. 3. Using it to plug a generator into your house during a power outage can kill electrical workers trying to fix the outage if you fail to open your circuit breakers.
Spectaculair give me 14 of them right now
Fine, I'll just use a couple of those with an ethernet coupler.
They tried calling it a doom cord, but heavy metal band started having electrical problems.
cries in ground fault circuit interruptor
Tell me you've never used a generator without saying you've never used a generator.
Even with a generator, suicide cord is the WRONG way to do it.
Not like that'll stop anyone anyways.
Tell me you've never heard of an Interconnect and put the lives of every power line worker in your area at risk every time there's a blackout without telling me...
Are you actually insane? Never EVER backfeed a socket like that. Way more dangerous than the Christmas light loonies.
I don't know much about circuits but could you switch the polarity to make this work?
It's not that it won't work - polarity doesn't quite work like that in AC systems - it's that as soon as you plug in one end, the other end has a pair of exposed metal contacts with mains voltage between them. One mistake, touching the contacts or having them come into something metal (like the ladder you are using to hang the Christmas lights) and someone dies
Also, once you plug it in to your strand of lights, the other end of your lights will have a live male plug dangling off it.
Thanks! I didn't realize the difference between AC and DC.
Reversing polarity is a Starfleet-approved procedure in all situations.
in AC, which is what home electricity uses, the polarity is constantly switching, from + , then - , then + , and so on, 50 or 60 times a second depending on where you live. This means that, unlike batteries, it's symmetrical, and you can just splice the cables and attach two male plugs together and they will work regardless, even if you somehow attach the neutral to live and live to neutral, in fact in many countries you can actually buy just the plug without the cable and then you can assemble it yourself in whatever way you please.
of course tho, this should be done only if you have a decent understanding of electricity, and it should not be attempted by someone who lacks those competences, hence why hardware stores "gatekeep" male to male plugs. If you really need one and are sure you understand how they work, you can probably make one yourself.
Ah I see. You can tell I don't know much about this lol. I figured it was like DC.
(If you) are sure you understand how they work
And
If you really need one
I understand how power systems work. But, I can't come up with a situation where I'd use a male-male AC cord rather than a safer and more reliable alternative. Most relevant is simply cutting off the female termination and reterminating through a breaker to the outlet ($15 and 15 min).
Oh I call the cables I use to wire up my controllers "suicide cords" because it's just the hot, neutral, and ground hanging out one end, waiting to touch me...
I worked at an electrical supply store foe a while. The amount of people trying to make these is really way too damn high. At least once a week.
If I ever buy one of these, I'd only ever use it to encase in resin and put on a shelf as a comedic ornament.
I made one of those once by accident. I was talking a long extension cord that had been cut in two and converting it into two smaller cords. I messed up and attached the male to the wrong cable.
I'm struggling to imagine what the use case would even be.
Christmas lights.
Strings of them have a plug on one side and a receptacle on the other. When hanging the lights, people don't notice if they have someone backwards and end up with a receptacle facing a receptacle. Rather than do the smart thing and turn the lights around, they go to the hardware store for assistance in killing themselves.
Another common one is backup generators.
Someone will turn off the breaker in the service panel, then plug a suicide cord from any receptacle in the circuit, to the output of a portable generator.
I'm sure there's more.
I'm sure someone would sell you one.
We intentionally made suicide cords all the time at my old job lol
I used it to connect a generator to the wall and give me some temporary power in my house when I was renovating. It's only dangerous if you are stupid.
Just because you didn't get hurt doesn't mean it wasn't dangerous.
There's a reason the people who write the fire and electrical codes say that if you need to do something like that, you need to have a properly installed transfer switch.
Not smart. You could kill yourself or some poor electrician working the problem outside your house somewhere.
The backup-generator seems to be the one semi-legit use-case that keeps coming up where few people have been able to present a significantly better alternative.
The safe method for a generator is a transfer switch. With that cable you make your circuit breaker useless and could also send power back out to the street and harm someone working on the problem.
There's literally an approved solution to the problem designed explicitly to solve the problem.
Install a transfer switch so you can disconnect utility power, switch to your generator and people can see the situation at the breaker.
If you don't have one, you use something called an "extension cord" to run power to your important devices for the duration of the outage.
If you don't know how to power a few appliances with a generator and some extension cords, you definitely shouldn't be thinking you can use a dangerous cable that people who do know you should never use in the first place.
But you don't really build those here do ya
NO
Lemming Line
