![]() ![]() In addition to the two contacts of the standard socket, a third contact is added. The metal threads of the bulb base touch the socket shell, which creates the neutral connection, and this is how the electrical circuit is completed.Ī 3-way socket has three electrical contacts. When a standard bulb is screwed into a standard socket, a matching contact on the bottom of the bulb presses against the metal tongue in the center of the socket, creating the live connection. ![]() The threaded metal shell is itself the neutral contact (contact three in photo). In the center of the bottom of a standard socket is the hot contact (contact one in photo), which typically looks like a small metal tongue bent over. 3-way bulbs Ī standard screw lamp socket has only two electrical contacts. ![]() In recent years, LED 3-way bulbs have become available as well. Ĭertain compact fluorescent lamp bulbs are designed to replace 3-way incandescent bulbs, and have an extra contact and circuitry to bring about similar light level. Lamp bulbs with dual carbon filaments were built as early as 1902 to allow adjustable lighting levels. So unlike incandescent bulbs controlled by a dimmer, the color of the light does not change between the three steps of light available. In 3-way incandescent light bulbs, each of the filaments operates at full voltage. A 3-way lamp requires a 3-way bulb and socket, and a 3-way switch. JSTOR ( May 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī 3-way lamp, also known as a tri-light, is a lamp that uses a 3-way light bulb to produce three levels of light in a low-medium-high configuration.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. So that’s what I’m looking for - a smart replacement, not an add-on… I tried to work through doing it myself within the base of a lamp with a relay in the base of the lamp, but in that case you are forced to replace the wire to the outlet as well, at the very minimum to include the ground wire… but also, many table lamp bases are not big enough.This article needs additional citations for verification. Even if you get a lamp socket that doesn’t have a switch and screw the smart wifi bulb socket into that, many of these units don’t even have a physical switch on them… Ugh! The only wifi light bulb socket switch for a table lamp I can find for sale are ones that screw into the old socket instead, so you have the same problem as you do with a smart wall plug. Even worse, if someone thinks they are turning the light on at the socket but the smart plug is off and the socket is switched on, they are actually turning the light off, so if you then turn the smart plug on, you have to tell them to try turning the light on AGAIN to actually turn it on.įor a wife that does not like automation, and you are working on getting automation set up within the home and it doesn’t work flawlessly, the WAF (Wife Approval Factor) is not only very low going into negative territory, but worse than that. So that same concept can be used with a table lamp light socket, to have the relay circuitry within the old fashioned looking table light switch socket itself - so “traditionalists” that hate automation would not be annoyed because twisting the little light socket switch would just turn the light on or off anyway… Using just a smart plug messes that up - if it is off, people cannot turn the light on by turning it on at the lamp - and if the light socket is turned off, remotely turning the smart plug on still doesn’t turn the light on. End result is, the switch always works, and doing it remotely also works, without the two concepts conflicting. ![]() The way this is possible, there is a Shelley relay behind the wall switch (the switch wires are attached to the Shelly relay instead), and the wires to the light are also attached to the Shelly relay instead of the switch. It doesn’t matter anymore the position of the switch in this case - whatever state the light is in, when the switch state is changed only once, the light changes to the other state. An old fashioned wall switch - turning the light on or off - even if the switch is turned off, so the circuit is physically disconnected - you can remotely turn the light on anyway (in that case you had used a Shelly Relay to set the physical switch into an “edge” switch)! So if the person then turns the switch to the off position, the lights which were already off, would go on. ![]()
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