The Graffiti Research Lab Vienna tool development archive is finally being brought to light. Here we present the Powerthief, an old piece of technology that we didn't come up with, but is worth reviving. By now they are mostly made redundant in every day life, and also illegal in most of central Europe. However, there are still useful applications for it in our environment today, especially if you're in need of a power-plug where there is usually none available.
The basic idea is pretty simple: in a lot of today's urban environments you can find a regular light bulb reasonably close-by. In Vienna, where this was executed, you can find one above almost every doorstep. The technology is even simpler - take the screw-cap of a regular light bulb and instead of connecting it to filaments it's being connected to a power socket.
To see how we made it and use it, we have a video we presented at the 2 year anniversary of the lovely gallery INOPERAbLE:
This project deals with electricity. Make sure not to blow yourself up!
You will need:
The basic idea is pretty simple: in a lot of today's urban environments you can find a regular light bulb reasonably close-by. In Vienna, where this was executed, you can find one above almost every doorstep. The technology is even simpler - take the screw-cap of a regular light bulb and instead of connecting it to filaments it's being connected to a power socket.
To see how we made it and use it, we have a video we presented at the 2 year anniversary of the lovely gallery INOPERAbLE:
This project deals with electricity. Make sure not to blow yourself up!
You will need:
- A light bulb
- Electric cabling
- Plastic tubing to cover the cabling
- Power socket
- Epoxy
- Something to cut the tubing
- Soldering iron and solder
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Signing UpStep 1: Putting it together
There isn't all that much to do. The steps have been captured (and played faster) on the video linked on the intro page. Remember that this project is dangerous and the use possibly illegal if you are in Europe. Improvise. In the video we used hot glue, but epoxy works better.
- Break the light bulb and get rid of excess glass/other material
- Solder the cables onto the connections (bottom and side) of the screw cap (there's no + / - since it's AC, so connect it how you want)
- Make the casing from the tubing
- Put the screw cap and the casing together with the epoxy
- Connect the cables to the powerplug and put it on with epoxy
- Test with care in a safe environment
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:D
in the uk your household lighting should be rated at 6 amps.
if its commercial it may be more like 10 amps,
as to france, they wire lighting radials on a 16 amp breaker.
but both the UK and france have RCD protecting the whole fuse board rated at 30mA.... this is a rad idea but you gotta have a rough idea what your plugging into, and in the worse case if you pull to many amps you'll trip the RCD, if it doesn't have one you'll trip the breaker....
if however the owner has an oldschool fuse board with re-wirable fuses and has either used the wrong rating of fuse cable or used some tin foil from an old kit-kat wrapper, you'll probably start a fire.
this is still a rad idea and i need one in my life.
peace
Both our right to free assembly and right to free speech were swept away in the last five years. Along with freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, every offence, no matter how minor, becoming arrestable, etc. Needless to say, the right to bear arms legally was crushed many years back. Now the police stop and search people and confiscate *anything* that could be used in the commission of a crime.
Try and think of anything that *cannot* be used to commit a crime. I can't. While thinking about that, think about joining the NRA and the ACLU. And think about boycotting the UK. Because that's where I'm talking about. And living.