touch operated bed side lamps

[chas2008]

Anyone have a clue how these things work or had them work by themselves ?...We have 3 in 2 bedrooms for over 5 years, never had a problem before but went to bed lastnight and found all 3 on !!.. ( cue the 'mingle mangle ' music)
Wifey accused me of putting them but hand on my heart i had not been near them.. any suggestions ? appart from the local excorcist ...

[daniela31]

I have these touch lamps too and I think they are brilliant!!

If you have a power cut and the leccy goes off, when it comes back on, the lamps come on by themselves. Have you any other evidence that you have had a power cut?

[chas2008]

my first thought, but i live on the cambs/northants border, we are always having powercuts in the night...never done it before...also it happened while we were downstairs and we saw no sign of any power cuts last night.. there was some stormy weather about and i was a bit cold , but again its never been an issue before ...

[daniela31]

Sometimes the electricity doesn't have to go completely off. It has happened to me even if there has been a bit of a flicker, you know, when the lights go dim for a second.

I don't believe you have spooks.....lol. There is a simple explanation, but this is the only one I can think of, because it has happened to me with the lamps.
Maybe someone else could come up with a technical explanation for you.
:-)

[chas2008]

i reckon that is the cause, just cant get my head around the fact they have never done it before, and like i said we have always had power problems..we did have some really heavy weather last night, 'the second coming' maybe ?...
thought they might be affected by atmospherics etc...

Bible & crucifix by the bed tonight ( it really was spooky)

[what..the?]

I have these too in the bedroom and they turn on only when a hand touches them so from that I assume it detects warmth from the hand or some form or charge through the body, if you touch an item to the lamp it doen't work.

At xmas last year we found that the lights kept turning on when we were not there even during the day and we only put them on last thing at night. I put it down to the extra heating in the house over the winter the warmth of the air had sent off the sensers.

[what..the?]

Heres your answer:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question42.htm

[tigerlily11]

I have a rather fancy touch lamp but I hate putting it on. It has a tendency of turning on by itself.
Bit creepy in the middle of the night.

[jaffa cake]

do you have an animal, our cat used to turn them on allthe time

[tigerlily11]

I thought that but I was sitting there reading one evening when it just popped of then popped back on.
I woke up a couple of times in the night to find it glaring away and the cat was outside.

[chas2008]

Phew...not just me then, can sleep soundly after all tonight..

[condor66]

My MIL had one of these and every time the telephone rang next to it , it set it off . She could always tell someone had been trying to ring if she came home and the light was on !!