Touch Sensitive Switch Turning Itself On

[RonB]

About five years ago I built a curio cabinet for my wife with two internal puck lamps. The lamps are controlled by a small, round, dome shaped touch switch on the back of the cabinet. The switch adjusts from low, medium to high intensity with gentle touch. During the past week or so I have noticed the lamps are turned onto the low intensity without the switch being touched. We have experienced at least one brief power interruption during this period.

Has anyone had experience with these types of switches doing this? I am assuming there are no safety concerns.

RonB

[WW]

Power outages will do that. I have a lamp that does that. 1 outage goes to low. 2 outages goes to medium. 3 outages goes to high. 4th outage will turn it off. When I return home lamp shows how many outages. If lamp is OFF I had

4 outages OR had NONE. ww

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Did you unplug the cord from the receptacle wait couple mins. and plug back in? If not, try it.

[The Daring Dufas]

I once had a touch lamp that would come on whenever there was a power burp. I would hear all the backup power supplies beeping their complaints about the incoming power quality at which time I would notice the touch lamp come on.

TDD

[jamesgangnc]

The detection has to be pretty sensitive so disruptions in the supply easily trip them. I'm not a fan myself ans we don't have any but there's nothing wrong with them other than the occasional false trip.

[RonB]

I'm going to assume it was power interruptions or surge, and keep an eye on it for a while. We live in a rural area where brief occurrences happen now and then. The switch really doesn't get used much unless we are looking at something in the display cabinet.

Thanks to all.

RonB

[jeff_wisnia]

Apologies if I repeat myself but last fall one of the metal bodied end table lamps I'd installed a touch swich in maybe ten years ago began to turn off (from its highest intensity) without my touching it.

I noticed a couple of Box Elder bugs had made it inside the house again and were occasionally seen near that lamp.

I couldn't believe that a bug that small had enough body capacitance to trip the touch dimmer if it landed on the lamp body. And, I finally saw one land there without affecting the dimmer.

I finally cought one of those damn bugs affecting the dimmer. It was crawling up the brass bulb socket shell and when it reached the top one of its front feet touched the top of the lamp bulb's screw base which was just barely visible at the top of the socket shell.

So, what was happening was that the bug was creating a resistive path between the metal lamp body and one side of the ac line. (Which side of the line depended on which way the non polarized line cord was plugged into the wall outlet.) And that was more than enough to trip the dimmer.

Jeff

[aemeijers]

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE) The speed of light is 1.8*10e12 furlongs per fortnight.

And nobody without your sig block would have had the patience, curiosity, and expertise, to figger all that out.....

Good going. It is nice to know some people just can't let a mystery remain unsolved.

[francetich.kane]

I had the same issue with several touch switches turning on all the time. These were new switches installed for several under cabinet led lights in a remodeled kitchen. Two of the switches in particular seemed to come on nearly every morning, often multiple times after turning them off.

The supply wires leading to these switches ran through a return air chase for the furnace. My suspicion is that the air moving through the chase (which occurred more in the morning when the furnace would first come on) caused a bit of static around the wires.

What solved this problem for me was quite simple. I snapped a couple of ferrite core noise filters over the source wires going to the switches. You can pick these up pretty cheap (bag of 20 for under $10). I put two on each switch, just behind the switch itself, but one may have done it. The switch still functions normally, and now the lights don't come on multiple times every morning.

[Hawk]

I solve my same problem with an exorcism. The switches stopped turning off and on after that.