OT electrical question

Saved me the trouble of doing the ASCII Art myself. The two wires in the middle are referred to as travelers, and there really isn't a defined NO or NC on the 3-way switches.

The pilot light in the switch is between the two travelers (you can use multiple lighted 3-way and 4-way switches in the same circuit), and they send the pilot light current through the ceiling light filament - remove that big lamp, and all the pilot lights in the switches go out.

When you check the circuit with the power applied & the lamp removed with a high-impedance meter, it looks like there's voltage at the lamp socket all the time, no matter which way you flip the switches...

That's when you take a step back and think"Sumthin's Wrong Here!" (sic ;-) and re-check all your assumptions. (And find out that they used lighted switches.)

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Right, but the present question is, how do they implement the pilot light at the four-way switch? Seems to me they really would need two neon lamps there to make it work.

Jim

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If you connect a single pilot light between the travelers on either side of the 4-way switch, it will be in parallel with the the pilot light at the 3-way wired to that side of the switch, so only one lamp needed at each switch.

I went thru the exercise of following the flow thru the various states of the switches before seeing the obvious. Doh!

Ned Simmons

Grrr, why didn't I see that to start! If one did put two lamps in the four way switch, one would be on at all times!

Thanks for the explaination!

Jim

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