Touch lamp turning on by itself at night??? 8

[frankiee]

We have a touch lamp where when we touch it, it gets brighter and brighter until it goes off again.
Last nite I turned off the lamp and went to bed. I wake up and my wife says "why did you turn the lamp on"?
I say "I didn't"
She says "That's spooky"
So, why did the lamp come on?
I don't know how one works.
Is it by electro statics? Or heat? Or what?
Is this why you don't see these things any more.
This is the first time I had one.
Thanks

 

[zeitghost]

Have you got a cat?

Or ghosts?

Spooky indeed...

It probably works by detecting the mains hum on your finger when you touch it.

I suppose random electrical static could trigger it, since it's likely to be pretty sensitive.

 

[IRstuff]

Does it only do it the wintertime?

TTFN

 

[frankiee]

It is winter here in Ontario Canada right now and the heat is on for about 4 weeks now.
We just got the lamp during the summer so it is the first winter. No cat but it is on a shelf with some clothes.
I can move the clothes to touch it and nothing happens.
I have no explaination what happened.
I personally shut it off like any other nite.
The kids say they did not come in and turn it on.
I would wake if they entered the room anyway.

 

[dpc]

Touch lamps are just trouble waiting to happen. The control is very sensitive and susceptible to all kinds of misoperations. Any type of RFI, such as cell phones, cordless phones, and computers can cause these things to come on and off. They are also a rich source of RFI in and of themselves.

Do yourself a favor and take out the touch control and put a mechanical switch in. It will only get worse.

Other than that, I think they are great

 

[itsmoked]

dpc is absolutely correct. They are extremely sensitive to all sorts of things including power transients. If the power so much as blinks they can come on. And since you have a multistage one it will never blink on and off but on and more on and morrrre on and moron. {Heheh.. couldn't resist}

In college I built my now wifey a touch lamp. They work by sensing the 60Hz field you are immersed in while being in any modern home. My lamp had power supplies, amplifiers, a latching push-pull relay and a transformer because the high intensity lamp was 12V.

It worked great...

She loved it....

One day she set it on a metal milk crate.....

It went insane...

It melted into slag...

She still married me. Woo Hoo!

 

[frankiee]

Thanks guys.
I showed my wife the replies and she says she will sleep in the bedroom tonight. Being there is no ghost. Woo Hoo!

 

[TD2K]

Just to be safe you could put some holy water in the humidifier ;-)

 

[Higgler]

If you use electric blankets, maybe that's the source if they are on the same circuit breaker as your lamp. Try an off/on experiment or moving the lamp to another location.
kch

 

[MacRae]

These lamps typically use a floating gate FET circuit. Very high impedance input and extremely sensitive to electrostatic fields and RFI

 

[coconutalley]

frankiee,

Just to provide a real life data point to the claims of RF,
my wife owns a HAM radio rig and whenever she does CW [morse code] with her Dad, the touch lamp we have would come ON and OFF with her transmissions!

Suggest looking around for RF sources.