this is a Glasgow switch fuse a classic of British electrical engineering and I'm sure anyone who's
worked in the electrical industry for some time knows the power you have when you use one of these
to disconnect a whole building or an enormous piece of plant I mean look at it it is absolutely
Rock solid I've seen instances where people strip these out and dent the skip when they put them
in there not to be doing that these days because the price of metal you don't want to be throwing
that away instead we have things like eBay where there's a healthy Market in people selling these
on which is where I got this one from but I've also got this smaller version here and we're going
to cut to the bench and show you how we converted these into the world's biggest Wireless switches
but before we do that let's just take a further trip down memory lane so remember these old phase
colors that were left behind so long ago let's take a look inside this engineering classic just
undoing the screws isn't enough you need to switch it off to undo the mechanical interlock and even
then you still have to dismember it further taking out the fuse so we can get to the switch contacts
which again are under a shielded shroud so this is even touch proof even though it's got an interlock
I wonder why that is so big terminals here so I'm not going to be able to get fin wires into there
so I need to bring out some quite thick wires even though this is not going to be used as a
switch it's just a signaling device for a little module that we'll see soon so using the way it
goes to convert from this big chunky wire down to a small wire that you'll see in a little while
to tighten the terminals up bring those shrouds back in and then just tighten one last one down
keep those wires out the way they can get caught up in the mechanism if you're not
careful and with those and then again just bring the fuses back in so this is just
for just for effects because we still need the mechanism and we're only using one pole of this
so here's the secret here this is the Philips Hue wall switch module it's designed to keep smart
lights working in the event of a switch being switched off so essentially you take the switch
out of circuit to keep power to Smart lights but it also enables you to convert any switch
to a wireless remote light switch and that's what we're doing here it's dead easy there's
two inputs into this wall switch module just plug into with a little wiring loom that comes into it
and then that's why we needed the the converter from the big wires to the small wires because
they are quite thin but again they're not actually switching anything they're just sensing whether
the switch is open or closed so just put them into the wave or connectors and in this case they're
just tucking this module out the way it is battery powered and the battery life is up to five years I
think I'm just hid that in the bottom there so it doesn't get in the way of the switching mechanism
so cover back on screws in place and that should be it we're converted to a wireless switch
I hope you'll agree that was a pretty simple process and just to prove it works lights off
lights on and all of the lights on the set on fact control now from this switch which is just
to prove I am not a magician there is there are no wires perhaps I'm a magician but why would you
want to do this obviously you know Everyone likes that industrial aesthetic now it's very popular
in certain types of installation almost illegal in some parts of London to open a cafe with a plaster
on the walls so Everyone likes exposed conduits or you could add a bit of a bit of drama to an
installation like that or perhaps at home you've all got a room that you like to retreat to and you
like to feel enough power of switching the lights on or off when you go into that special place
some U.S visitors did uh contact us about this obviously, this is a classic of British engineering
but I believe you've got some too if you look on eBay there is Cutler Hammer um they make a similar
robust version for the American Market ironically now both companies both owned by Eaton so we're
friends across the pond a little bit more trivia inside this switch you're not see what you don't
see on many isolate is that actually tells you the power loss in the lid there so nine and a half
Watts lost across this when it's working at its 100 amp current never seen that ever again so what
I've actually done on the bench here is create the second largest wireless switch in the world the
other one is behind we will check it still works because I think we should have two-way switching
okay we've got the lights off lights on and that demonstrates the flexibility of the system as
part of the Philips Hue lighting system you can also use the other controls they have in there
such as this remote control so again I can switch the lights on and off with that and select scenes
in terms of this switch you can also determine what this switch does in terms of exactly which
lights it switched off or even scene selection if you want to do that but it's that flexibility you
can have almost any type of switch and that's what we've looked at in this video.