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!
Darwin cable.
But you don’t really build those here do ya
I’ve used a suicide cord before in some rare instances. When I was finished I immediately took it apart.
You didn’t do it right…
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.
Fuck if I know… I bought the thing used from a buddy like 12 years ago and that was the cord he’d always used … Plugs into a regular outlet on the outside of the camper and then the outlets inside have power.
/me shrugs
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.
I mean, driving a car is dangerous, everything has a risk inherent to it but you can minimise it by being prudent.
You turn off the breaker. You plug your generator abomination into a receptacle. Your partner checks the panel – the breakers are off, it’s safe to work with the electrical! They kill themselves.
You could just not be a threat to yourself and people around you.
Yes, you minimize risk by being prudent and using reasonable and cost effective safety measures.
In a car, that’s things like seatbelts, airbags, and other safety features.
The equivalent for powering your house with a generator is the aforementioned transfer switch.
What you’re doing is saying that driving a car without seatbelts or airbags is perfectly safe, you just need to not get in an accident.
Stop powering your house with a generator plugged in via the dumbest possible cable and just install a fucking transfer switch. They’re not expensive and it keeps you from needlessly endangering people, or even just having a preposterously dangerous cord laying around.
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.
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.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.
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
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.)
The problem really is the super exposed hot prong you now have once you plug one end in
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.
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.
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.
Well, maybe it’s because you may die if you accidentally touched touched the prongs? The purpose of female plugs is among other reasons to prevent accidentally touching them.
I guess the fact that it can kill you easily is not enough to call it a suicide cable lmao
Yeah, let’s call it a self defence cable instead. Like a corded taser.
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
cries in ground fault circuit interruptor
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
Just make pro-gay gay jokes.
Oh can you tell me one?
Gay men are fucking assholes
Edit: afterthought, it’s a joke I heard, I hope no one thinks this is an offensive statement I made
That is a sweeping generalization. You’re completely ignoring the Bottoms.
Gay jokes as in just jokes making fun of gay people? Why do you miss making that? I can just tell you that especially when I was a gay kid, I would have wished no-one would make such.
I know so many gay and racist jokes as a result of my upbringing. I’ve only been able to convert a few. There’s alao a few I can still tell to the right crowd.
That’s pretty gay.
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/shrug at least I’m not an asshole purposely hurting other people
Are you referring to me? Because I am not.
Lame. You’re not doing it right unless it hurts your asshole
I was gonna tell you a gay joke, butt fuck it.
I need to befriend more gays
Or get a black friend ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I use an app for that!
I guess you’re too straight edge for that.
God, straight edge is so old I literally had to get a consultation to understand the insult
Joke not insult! Straight edge is like doing the right thing or something like that.
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
/But hardware stores don’t want to sell it tooooo youuu…/
/…tooo ya…/
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Just use 2 paper clips and some duct tape, problem solved!
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…
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I’m guessing your turn was last and that’s why you’re still here.
Nah but we did stop when we took out the neighbourhood’s power with our fooling. Just as well since I’ve since heard it’s quite dangerous
All I got to zap was myself.
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.
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.
FYI, you can just turn off the main breaker of the residence to prevent backfeeding into the power lines.
If someone can’t make the own cord, what’s the chance they know how vital it is to flip the breaker?
You can, but if forgetting to flip a switch can result in death, then you need a stronger safety control
Someone incompetent enough to forget to shut off the main shouldn’t be operating a generator anyway.
That’s not the point. Normal, sensible people make mistakes because they are tired or stressed or got distracted or just plain unlucky, so things have to be designed so that people can make a mistake and it not instantly create a potentially lethal situation
I don’t think you completely understand what’s being discussed here.
Someone who’s not competent enough to install a proper transfer switch (or at least hire a professional to do it) shouldn’t be operating a generator.
… Except the breaker only interrupts the connection on the “hot” line…
I don’t know much about circuits but could you switch the polarity to make this work?
Reversing polarity is a Starfleet-approved procedure in all situations.
I know even less probably but I’m going to say yes and let you find out for me.
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
Thanks! I didn’t realize the difference between AC and DC.
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.
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.
(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).
Picture this: It’s 8pm in early December. You’ve been hanging lights on your house since about 10 this morning, and it’s long after dark. As you’re laying the last section, you realize that you’ve got two female connectors next to each other. Do you tear it up and do it again, or do you hack a solution together so you can go inside and thaw?
The suburban solution is to create a false dichotomy to rationalize outsourcing a simple electrical issue to Lowes.
The hack solution is to cut two ends and reterminate them.
I’d hack it. To do it well it’s 8 crimps, wire loom, and harness tape. So, 10 minutes and $5.
and you’d be right. If you are sure about it, and you know how it works, just make it yourself, so that you don’t need to put anyone else in danger of getting sued.
The reason hardware stores don’t sell them is that people WILL use them in a dangerous way, and they don’t want to be held responsible.
Makes sense. I’d not sell a hack job. But, for a temporary thing that’s mine, sure.
Ah I see. You can tell I don’t know much about this lol. I figured it was like DC.
