At some point or other, many people have no-doubt wanted a way to control their touch lamp from a distance. In my case, it was because there was a lot of stuff in the way.
What many people apparently don’t realize is how simple this is. Just tape, loop, or otherwise fasten one end of a wire to the touch-sensitive portion of the lamp and connect the other end to whatever metal object you want to control the touch lamp.
In my case, the parts list consisted of one round-headed screw for the new touch-knob and a piece of speaker wire. No tape was needed because I looped the end of the wire around the touch-knob on my lamp and, to hold the “touch screw” in place, I simply drilled a pilot hole into my home-made desk, inserted the stripped end of the wire so the screw would make contact, and drove the screw in using my favorite screwdriver. Also, while it will have no effect on the function of the construct, it’s often desirable to keep the wire out of the way. I just used wood staples for this.
For those who are wondering, this works because touch-lamps operate by body-capacitance, which requires only a single electrode. For details, see HowStuffWorks.com.
Lair Improvement – Remote-Controlling Touch Lamps by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
By submitting a comment here you grant this site a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution under the same terms as the associated post.
All comments are moderated. If your comment is generic enough to apply to any post, it will be assumed to be spam. Borderline comments will have their URL field erased before being approved.