Comment on A secret cord

ImWaitingForRetcons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Legitimate? Basically none. Illegitimate? First, lazily fixing a fuckup on putting up strings of Christmas lights where you can’t daisy chain them properly, with bonus points for the likeliehood of needing to break off the grounding pin. Second, injecting power from a generator into a single circuit of your house if the power is out.

  In one sense, you could argue conductors are conductors and if you think through every eventuality you can mitigate risk, but on the other, if you find you’re in a situation where one of these seems useful, you are not the type of person thinks through every eventuality.

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  • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    it can function as a temporary fix until you can do it properly. unfortunately temporary is often the most permanent solution.

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    • vrek@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Usually this are associated with Christmas lights… What’s the rush? Do it right this weekend instead of hoping you have time next weekend and you don’t burn down your house in the meantime

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      • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        oh dont gotta tell me, id rather not hook up lights at all instead of using this. with temporary solution i mean things like getting power during a natural Desaster

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• captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  There is none. These are not made. They should not be made. We will not help you make these.

  The reason power plugs/sockets are gendered the way they are is to prevent energized contacts from ever being exposed to touch. A cable that reverses the gender can and almost certainly will expose mains voltage to exposed contacts, which almost certainly will electrocute someone or cause a fire.

  Bad stupid wrong reasons people come up with for wanting these:

  • Attaching a generator to the circuits in a house. Plug one end into the generator’s outlet, plug the other into a wall socket, and now that circuit in your house, and possibly others, are energized. In addition to the cable being a death hazard if unplugged from the house end, I don’t know how circuit breakers behave when the source is on the load side, and if you don’t throw the main breaker you’re energizing the lines coming out of your house, meaning you’re putting power on the mains. You probably want to do this during a power failure, which means linemen might be working on the lines, they expect them to be cold, but because an idiot bought a generator and some parts from aisle 3 at Lowe’s, it isn’t. If you’re trying to run your generator while attached to the grid to try to reduce your power bill, you deserve the resulting fire. There is a correct way to do this; you can get plugs and sockets designed for this, you’ll often find camper trailers equipped with them, and you need an interlocked switch that prevents both the generator and the power grid from being attached simultaneously.

  • You strung your Christmas lights backwards, and now the female end is closest to where you want to plug them in. Okay fine, I’ll just get a male-to-male cable and plug them in backwards, what can go wrong? The male plug at the end of your daisy chain dangling somewhere in a bush, under your eaves etc. in the winter weather getting rained or snowed on is what can go wrong. The correct solution is pay attention to what you’re doing, Clark Griswold.

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• marcos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Some people claim to use them to plug generators into their homes when the lights go out.

  But your generator should plug into some place before the main panel, and it’s easy to put the right connector on that one place destined to it and where you shouldn’t plug anything else. So it’s people not prepared to use a generator, that want to use one anyway, and that have to be sure to disconnect it before the power comes back on or they will find the main use-case for the cable (AKA, the one on the meme).

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  • SantasMagicalComfort@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You should put a transfer switch in so you’re not back feeding power into the grid and shocking some poor guy who isn’t expecting it to be live.

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Or they cheaped out because 500 for a Jenny is a lot for some people

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    • vrek@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I had a cheap generator. I plugged in an extention cord through the window, into a powerstrip with the fridge, modem and 2 sockets to charge devices. Worked perfectly when I needed it but I also had a kerosene space heater so I wasn’t too concerned about freezing(bring all blankets into the living room, build a blanket fort atleast 6 feet away from the space heater and have everyone cuddle, calms people down, provides warmth and forms bonds.

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• CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Commiting suicide

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• HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  None for the male to male especially, because there is no way to involve it in a hot system that doesn’t involve having an exposed prong carrying the receptacles voltage. The female to female is still dangerous, but doesn’t inherently expose the circuit to whatever is in the environment.

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• random_character_a@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Not legimate, but solar panel tech has made a market for this nonsense.

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• Zikeji@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I know if I were to setup the V2L feature on my car to power my home it would look like this (the manual way). But there would be a physical interlock that prevents mains power from being on while this is plugged in.

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