Timeline for Can anyone tell me what this little white box on my outlet is?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
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| Dec 13, 2021 at 0:37 | comment | added | MacGuffin | It's an inelegant "hack" to avoid having to call in (and pay) a licensed electrician to get power. Anything under 25 volts is "low voltage" and doesn't require an electrician to run in the walls. Obviously plugging something in an outlet doesn't require an electrician either. The "proper" (at least IMHO) way to do this is to wire the transformer into the outlet box. That would require opening up the wall (and closing up the hole again) versus fishing a wire through the wall, plugging in a transformer, and hoping the outlet cover hides any damage. | |
| S Jul 12, 2021 at 11:10 | history | suggested | user113627 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 9, 2021 at 20:56 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 12, 2021 at 11:10 | |||||
| Oct 23, 2015 at 16:29 | comment | added | Doktor J | The alarm system my brother-in-law had installed a few years ago has this, and it's AC output as well. I've been house-shopping recently and have spotted this in many of the houses I've looked at. The immediate giveaway that it's for an alarm system is that the wall wart is located on the same wall as the alarm control panel (though sometimes the panel is on the opposite side of the wall). | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 20:49 | comment | added | Joe | Well, yes, if you read the entire post, but who does that? | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 20:48 | comment | added | Johnny |
@Joe - also the poster's observation I see extra wires coming straight out of the sheet rock on the bottom of it also indicates wires coming through the sheetrock.
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| Oct 22, 2015 at 19:57 | comment | added | Joe | You can see a bit of drywall cut out (messily) at the bottom of the outlet - likely this indicates there is indeed some wiring going back in. | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 16:59 | comment | added | user1103 | AC Step-down transformers. I've also seen many in commercial spaces running their door dingers/buzzers and old CCTV cameras. I haven't seen them running any modern CCTV equipment, but alarms still use them; they have DC inverters built into the board. Not sure why this is. But yeah, pro installers just run wires into a hole in the wall. Always seemed a bit janky to me. | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 16:11 | comment | added | bitsmack | I bought a house built in the 1990's (in the USA). It had a few of these that were put in place by a security alarm company. One powered the alarm control panel. The other powered a motion sensor up in one corner of a room. Seemed kinda hokey, but it was a system installed by a large, nationally known security company... | |
| S Oct 22, 2015 at 15:09 | history | suggested | donjuedo | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 22, 2015 at 15:06 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Oct 22, 2015 at 15:05 | comment | added | BrownRedHawk | They also had those (very similar) for Comcast Fios systems. | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 14:42 | comment | added | KlaymenDK | Carefully screw it off and see if there's anything connected to those output terminals (perhaps being routed back into the wall?). A DIY genius might do something like that. :-D | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 14:36 | comment | added | Doug McClean | Well played, sir! | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 14:08 | comment | added | Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight | @Kris most power bricks are DC supplies, but they don't have to be. Old fashioned DC bricks worked by combining a transformer to make low voltage AC with a rectifier and capacitor to turn it into low voltage DC. Remove the 2nd half of the hardware and you've got an AC brick. | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 13:39 | comment | added | Kris | I always thought those output DC current | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 10:55 | comment | added | Speedy Petey | This. Simply put, it is a transformer to power an alarm system. | |
| Oct 22, 2015 at 7:38 | history | answered | Johnny | CC BY-SA 3.0 |