Nice, concise, down to the point visual explanation on the concept of mulitway switching, I sure could have used a video or two like this to help me grasp the concept while I was a new apprentice. Speaking of 3 ways and 4 ways, as a bonus for troubleshooting purposes ONLY, you should do a video like this on a dangerous setup known as a farmers or Chicago 3 way among many other nicknames, that involves 2 different circuits, hot and neutral from each landing on the travellers, and a single wire from each common to the light, I actually ran across this a while back on a yardlight switched from a house and barn, rigged up sometime towards the late 1940s when the farm got electricity and indoor plumbing.
Thanks, I have a video on it i made like a riddle type video like can you figure it out? I have on my tik Tok moving more and more stuff over I didn't a video based on your last comment on stoves. I showed the shared neutral in ground was violation in my 1940 NEC that I own and then it was allowed in my 1947 NEC
Funny how they're called 3-way and 4-way, which seems a little misleading to me. In German the 3-way is called Wechselschalter which directly translated means swap-switch, which makes sense to me as you can swap the connection from one line to the other. Also the 4-way is called Kreuzschalter which translates to cross-switch, also very descriptive as you can crossover the lines through switching. Nonetheless interesting video, maybe you want to explain your test setup and use case in real life before going into detail how it works internally. Makes it easier to follow.
As a german who's never looked up how Kreuzschalter work, I watched this video and immediately realized the reason behind the terminology. 4& 3-way make sense too though: The 3-way has 3 cables attached, the 4-way has 4.
I feel like I've seen this before in my home we have 3 of those types of switches one in the garage where there's a switch in the garage and inside the house leading to the garage if any ons of the one closes garage lights come on if both of them are closed/open the garage lights are off
UK it would 2way (because its switching from 2 places) and intermediate if theres more than 2 places upto infinite places to switch from. It doesnt make sense to me why americans call it 3 and 4 way. In intermediate switches your strappers (cable) would have your common connected through and would only be used at the 2way switches at the beginning and end of the switching arrangement.
Because we are American and like being different. I caught myself saying two way the other day instead of a three way. Two way makes more sense but pneumatic and hydraulic use the same way descriptor as does water valves. Apparently someone counted the common as a way. A fluid tee has three ports, so it must be a three way.
Like he said in the video. It's called a four-way because it has 4 screws in the back. Thus 4 terminals for connecting 4 wires. Hence the 3-way has 3 terminals for 3 wires. Same here in Belgium 😅 Only we call the 3 way a "wissel" (meaning changer) and a 4 way a "kruis" (meaning cross) It has nothing to do about how many physical places a switches has to be to put a light on or off. In general (and in the older houses) a max of 3 to 4 physical places they still use this setup. Nowadays even a single physical place to put the light on/off is replaced by a pushbutton and Relay or domotica. Nevertheless, Nice video for People who don't know how it works. 😊
This is explaining light switches. If youve ever had a room where there are 2 switches, which can be each individually flipped at any time to toggle a light, then you experienced a 3 way light switch and this video explains it quite well!
These are mostly for hallways, you have a (3way) switch at the entrance, one (4way) in the middle if theres an extra room and one (3way) at the end of the hall.
