Electrical Device Identification

January 20, 2023 3:03 PM

Can you identify this electrical device? It's located approximately 6'5" up an interior wall on the bottom floor of a freestanding house in northern New England.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

The picture is quite small, but those appear to be two plug in relays with a what is possibly a dymo tape label on the plate above them. Possibly home made or custom. Given that the relays are exposed that way, they're most likely for something low voltage. Could be burglar/fire alarm related, could be speaker switching for some custom in wall audio, could be low voltage lighting control, motorized blinds, HVAC zone/damper control, etc. If you can zoom in further, what I think is a label at the top might be very revealing.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:27 PM on January 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

The blurriness is making this hard, but... I have no idea why, but my first thought was that it was wires connected to built-in speakers. Something about the blue green on those connectors is something I connect with the sorts of screw-down connections I've seen in audio.
posted by straw at 4:46 PM on January 20, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks, both. Unfortunately, that's the best picture I'm going to be able to get - it's a screengrab from a Matterport 3D property tour.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:09 PM on January 20, 2023

That's really interesting. That the two plug-in things seem different and look like they might be tape-covered wires attached to connectors, along with the style of the label, make me agree with the above that it's a home-brew thing at low voltage. Very unlikely to be either dangerous or useful.

Door speaker / alarm / audio seems possible. Where is this thing? If it's near the front door, I vote for security/door-entry. If it's near the cable TV box, I vote for weird audio distribution. If it's in the bedroom. . . I'm not sure. Maybe an intercom from the '70s? I almost certainly won't hurt you and you can remove it and cut the wires if you find it ugly. (Just to be extra safe, if you don't have a volt meter, cut the wires with insulated nippers or while wearing gloves and cap them with wire nuts. But, I'd guess there's a 2% chance this is connected to anything.)

You could also just leave it. Or hang artwork over it.
posted by eotvos at 7:09 PM on January 20, 2023

Response by poster: Where is this thing?

It's reasonably close to an exterior door, so the idea of a bell/security/similar seems logical.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:30 AM on January 21, 2023

The white thingies poking out of the wall plate look to me to be potmeter shafts, allowing adjustment of something electronic that's inside the wallbox. Light level sensitivity would be my first guess, with the relays being used to switch exterior lighting or maybe sunshades.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:43 AM on January 21, 2023

This has been bugging me all week, but I'm 90% sure I've seen something like that in a doctor or dentists' office. I don't think that's audio distribution or an alarm system; not with a blue label-maker label on it, at that height, and the red alarm light at the top and functional lights on the sides makes me think this isn't some weird homebrew things.

Can you link us up to the Matterport site?
posted by mhoye at 8:56 AM on January 23, 2023

Response by poster: mhoye - I don't want to link to the listing, but I'll send it to you in a message.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:31 AM on January 23, 2023