About 50 years ago electroluminescent plates were introduced. These sat behind a regular wall switch plate. Sometimes longer scews were needed to pass through both plates and into the plaster-depth box.
Great. In a darkened room you cold see a blue glow (amost) around the complete switch plate.
They only lasted a short time.
Now I am searching for something similar. MK appear to make a neon equivalent but does it work and does it last?
Are there any successful alternatives?
ISTR that these bleed their power/current through the lamp and not a neutral.
That could be a problem with LED lamps if you do not have a neutral at the light switch. You might end up with flashing LED lamps or sweet FA happening.
Not seen them for years and I have never fitted one.
Neons tend to survive a few years (variable), gradually getting dimmer, or flickering dimly. A DIY solution, if the switch plate is tin enough to allow light through, is an LED fed from via an ac rated capacitor, but be aware the light it controls will be live too, even when the switch is off. It may not work as well, if the lamp itself is CFL or LED.
I fitted neon inserts to two of our MK switches about 20 years ago. They are still working) and bear in mind that they spend more time 'on' than 'off').
I have a switch that controls all the washing machines. It is never switched off. It was fitted in 1980. The neon now glows at each end but not in the middle.
Bill
I did that about 35 years ago in my first house, except (i) I used a small LED and mains dropper capacitor, and (ii) it was inside an immersion heater controller.
It was still working when I sold the house.
Perhaps the problem was there were two types. The snag with one type is that too long in the dark and the lite faded, the others were a bit thicker and contained a radioactive gas, like in the original trimfone beta lites. These were considered to be not safe, though in reality they were of course as it was the phosphor that was glowing from the beta particles, and the particles never made it through the glass. In the case of neon ones, These are after my time of being able to see, but it depends on how the illumination occurs. Most neon's end up going black inside the glass, from the reaction with the ions I think, so if they do not have replaceable lamps they end up dimming over time. Who remembers the Decimo Jumbo digital alarm clock? each segment in the display was in fact a miniature neon light wired into a pcb and pushed into a hole behind frosted plastic, looked great when new, but as the neon's aged all the segments were of different brightness's. I spent hours replacing neon's on that thing trying to match up the brightness's, all for it all to go out of whck a few months later. Nowadays of cours one would use bright leds instead, but this was a long time ago. Brian
I did the same thing with a bathroom light ceiling pull on/off switch. Unlike the power switches for heaters, low-power switches have no indication of whether they're on or off. So I fitted one with a neon and resistor. IIRC (and this was years ago) I used a higher value resistor than usual to keep the neon working longer. It was quite visible even with the higher-value resistor.
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