"Seriously?! It's like cutting your dick to prevent pregnancy!"

January 22, 2017 8:25 AM

Mehdi Sadaghdar [painful attempt at singing] of ElectroBOOM devises a way to power your stuff when there's a power outage [zapping and beeping]. (Previously) [h/t Miss Cellania]

YouTube Channel
Best of Mehdi 2016 [more zapping and beeping]

posted by Johnny Wallflower (30 comments total)

Mehdi is an example of how to do the gonzo science demo genre right.

As opposed to, say, Cody's Lab, or even Colin Furze, I don't feel like I need to worry about kids watching Medhi's videos and then getting themselves killed.

I also love that while his comic timing has only gotten better over the years, he hasn't bothered to try to downplay or modify his accent. And because of the YouTube platform, and monetization through Patreon, he doesn't have to.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:50 AM on January 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

You really shouldn't power your room or house through an outlet in an outage.

1. Fire risk. The wiring to that room wasn't designed to carry a house's worth of power.

2. Electrocution risk. A big danger in storms to utility workers is people who installed generators or generation at their houses but didn't install the required transfer switch that separates their house from the grid in an outage and prevents their system from back-feeding into the grid and energizing their neighbors and downed wires.

Here's an article about that.
posted by Blue Tsunami at 8:55 AM on January 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

I liked this guy. Comedic technology! But crazily risky. I'm afraid of electricity. Only risky thing I do is tongue test nine volt batteries.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:05 AM on January 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've watched his guitar video many many times, and I still start panicking at around 0:35...
posted by effbot at 9:28 AM on January 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Sometimes you just have to live on the edge.

I was impressed with him covering the battery amperage draw, people tend not to understand how quickly you can kill a battery.
I installed a small solar system in my grandmas beach house in the 80's and the biggest problem was getting people to understand that you need to turn off any light you are not using (pre LED) and the "well I don't know what happened ,the lights just got dimmer and went out".

One of the biggest no nos is not opening your main house breaker ,since you will cause the power lines outside to be live and you may shock workers trying to do repair work.
posted by boilermonster at 9:54 AM on January 22, 2017

From the comments: "You are like Leonardo da Vinci, but after brain accident .."
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:01 AM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm experiencing an unusual mixture of inquisitiveness, admiration, and anxiety.
posted by carter at 10:03 AM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I have loved his stuff forever. My first exposure was the guitar video.

I think people like him and Captain Disillusion show the plus side of crowdfunding, which has had a awful lot of downsides lately.
posted by Samizdata at 10:06 AM on January 22, 2017

I am surprised by how funny he is. Youtubers usually aren't because they think comedy == shouting, jumping around and swearing
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:13 AM on January 22, 2017

(To be fair, there was a good amount of shouting, jumping around, and swearing)
posted by sexyrobot at 10:38 AM on January 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Just short the plug in question, and the correct breaker opens. Ha ha ha! Don't do it."

Love it.
posted by traveler_ at 10:46 AM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

The thing about "Just short the plug in question, and the correct breaker opens. Ha ha ha! Don't do it." is that my dad is an EE who worked with high voltage systems. I pretty much grew up thinking that was fine.

So, yeah, when I'm mapping out circuits, I've been known to do it that way... Tests to make sure that the breaker is working correctly too..

(And, actually, the other thing about working on old houses with bad wiring is that ya get pretty used to discovering the bad wiring by getting hit when you least expect it... So ya just start every project by shorting all the shit you might come in contact with.)

(Seriously: Don't do it.)

And I love ElectroBoom. I often learn something, and my wife just came in and videoed me because I was laughing so hard and she said "you have to see what you look like".
posted by straw at 11:14 AM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

This guy is awesome, I just love his electric guitar! ROFL
posted by metafiltermonkey at 11:32 AM on January 22, 2017

How much more expense would it add to the construction of a house to have a properly wired generator feed-in port, just after the meter, for use in the event of a power outage (which are not exactly unheard-of)?
posted by acb at 12:08 PM on January 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

How much more expense would it add to the construction of a house to have a properly wired generator feed-in port

It's called a transfer switch iiuc, and a quick Googling indicates a couple of hundred bucks, plus installation costs.
posted by effbot at 12:16 PM on January 22, 2017

Yeah, a while ago I had this wacky idea about wanting to measure my skin capacitance to see how it would differ from people with functional peripheral nerves, and this was the first video that came up on the subject. Now I'm scared and not sure I want to do it anymore.
posted by Soliloquy at 12:55 PM on January 22, 2017

I did enjoy him ripping open every inverter box to find that yep, they all use the same shitty reverse polarity protection circuit, then as an aside tosses out "by the way this is the circuit they should be using".

Then he promptly shocks himself multiple times for comedic effect.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:55 PM on January 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

After I'd replaced the last incandescent light in the place with an LED bulb, I did the sums and realised that even quite a modest UPS on the lighting circuit could keep the place lit for a long time during an outage. Add another for your router, and provided you don't need to cook and don't open the refigerator too much, you'll be OK for a few hours. I'm surprised nobody does this as a commercial product now; my total house full-blaze lighting is well under 100w, my laptop batteries last six to eight hours and... well, what else do you need, these days? (Yeah, heating. Wrap up well.)
posted by Devonian at 1:34 PM on January 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

"... no matter what mooshi means in German."
posted by tickingclock at 1:37 PM on January 22, 2017

I'm surprised nobody does this as a commercial product now

They're called cell phones. Pocket flashlight, radio, communication device, video output, etc. I even have a solar array that can charge one in a pinch.
posted by pwnguin at 1:44 PM on January 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't lose power as much since the upgraded the power ... stuff a couple years ago, but we had a big heavy wet snow a couple weeks ago and lost power for half a day. Woodstove, led flashlights and a couple candles. Didn't get out the oil lamps because it was late, but a battery operated string of led fairy lights is enough to read to sleep by. Worst part is the sounds of neighbors powering up their generators. A couple hours with no power should be no problem unless somebody has a serious health condition.

Electricity is scar, and mysterious and I totally respect people who understand how to make it do stuff.
posted by theora55 at 1:49 PM on January 22, 2017

"I'm surprised nobody does this as a commercial product now;"

I believe that Tesla does actually. I forget what it's called though and can't look it up at the moment
posted by I-baLL at 3:30 PM on January 22, 2017

Electricity is scar

Just curious, is this some kind of new slang the kids are using? Or did you just mean to type "scary"?
posted by thelonius at 3:44 PM on January 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

You really shouldn't power your room or house through an outlet in an outage.

Absolutely, but in a lot of places in the world you either take the risky option or spend a considerable amount of your life without power. When I was living in Bourj Hammoud in Beirut, we'd lose power for between 4 and 12 hours a day, every day. The only way to get any power at all was to subscribe to a local generator, which provided power during the outages. There are literally dozens of different cables rigged up between every building. The fire risk must be insane. My girlfriend used to dangle an extension cord out of her window and the neighbours would plug it into their power supply downstairs. My European sensibilities did rather struggle with that. But when the temperature is above 35c, with stifling humidity and no breeze, the risks people will take to run a fan are pretty astonishing. Is it sensible? No, absolutely not. But tolerance for risk is higher when the alternative is to put your life on hold for hours at a time.
posted by howfar at 4:06 PM on January 22, 2017

anyone have an opinion on that Mooshi meter?

I'm at the point in my Arduino tinkering that I need a multimeter and I don't know whether to buy a generic cheapo starter meter, a nicer handheld meter from Fluke or similar, a meter ( & scope?) kit that works w/a smartphone (like the Mooshi), or eBay a used Fluke or Tektronix handheld combo meter & scope.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:34 PM on January 22, 2017

I don't know personally, but the eevblog has addressed the multimeter a few times fairly recently, and it has the ring of truth.
posted by wotsac at 5:23 PM on January 22, 2017

Male-to-male power cable we meet again.

To quote a hardware store sign, "No one makes this. No one should ever make this."
posted by ckape at 5:59 PM on January 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

I will confess to once making a surface mount outlet box that plugged into another outlet. I tried to do it 'right' (i.e. romex in conduit, not an extension cord, used an outlet w/a circuit interrupter). It was still a terrible idea, and I decommissioned the arrangement after two days because it was giving me the willies.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:35 AM on January 23, 2017

> well, what else do you need, these days? (Yeah, heating.

The big step up in household electrical consumption is the refrigerator and all the heating - hot air for the room heating, any sort of hair-related heat, for those that like to blow-dry or curl/straighten their hair, hot water for the house, in case cold showers aren't your thing, heating water for coffee, heating up food food, either via the toaster, the microwave, or the stove/oven. Non of that is trivial to power with solar, and cheap apartments frequently don't have natural gas. Moreover, bringing a propane tank into the house seems like a non-starter - what's a bigger fire hazard than a potential electrical one? A literal fire.

I have a portable solar panel off Amazon I can use to charge my (battery to charge my) phone/other small electronics but enough juice for anything bigger is much more of a commitment.

Back to the topic at hand, though; in a great example of the advice of "show, don't tell", ElectroBoom does a much better job of warning me that electricity can hurt. Disclaimers only go so far before they get ignored. I saw a YouTube video say "don't try this at home" when it was clearly a dad and his kid doing exactly that. Worse, the science experiment featured was a really good one for a supervised child to try!
posted by fragmede at 7:52 AM on January 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised nobody does this as a commercial product now

They're called cell phones. Pocket flashlight, radio, communication device, video output, etc. I even have a solar array that can charge one in a pinch.


The more I think about that, the more I am amazed at just what an advance in technology this has been in the past 20 years.

I mean, considering its computing power, and that it can also access the internet and its collected knowledge of humankind, and that it fits in the palm of your hand, we are pretty much living inside science fiction now.
posted by darkstar at 9:51 AM on January 24, 2017