[Archived]

Haha, Tom is hilarious! I was actually thinking the same thing but saved the key strokes. :0

[Greg]

I find this discussion very interesting, even thought I don’t have a Marathon.

How are the wires held in the Wago board? Is that what the square holes are for? Push a screw driver (or possibly a “Wago tool”) in the square hole and a spring loaded tab is released allowing a wire to be removed or inserted? Remove the screw driver or tool and the wire is held tight?

Since I see four round holes (two on one side and two on the other), can a single hot wire be put in any of the round holes and other three holes are now hot?

In Walt’s explanation, he references “ground wires”. Is this type of wiring what is called “switched ground”? I’m tempted to ask why “switched ground” vs. “switched hot”, but I can search the Internet for an explanation of that.

[Tim]

Dick,

Leon told me there was a wago tool – but a small slotted screwdriver would work too. You sort of press it into the square hole and the round hole will let go. It works like you think it does. Just like a press in 110V plug… if you’ve ever installed those before.

I also noticed on other strips in the bus – but don’t see any on the photo above – that there are jumpers that go into the other holes so that you can take a single feeder wire… plug it into the wago, then jumper it to more than wago piece to feed more than 1 wire. Sort of like if you have 4 lights you could have 1 hot off a realy or something and then jumper it on the wago so that you can feed 4 wires that hot. It’s like a very configureable powerstrip. This wago setup has a common rail that holds the wago pieces. It is a way to make everything very clear, easy to see, and more easily traceable when there are problems. The only thing left that makes chasing stuff hard is the “big bundle of zip-tied wires.”

I don’t know if the terminology is how you put it (I’m capable in electronics but I wouldn’t say a pro or anything) but I have noticed sometimes things are wired so that Negative is the switched wire instead of the positive. In AC it’d be the neutral vs hot. I don’t actually know why – but I’d assume it has somthing to do with safety since neutrals and negatives if crossed don’t do anything. But… I don’t really know. Or there is the other common reason people do things which is cost. Maybe its cheaper to make electronics switch negatives/neautrals.

Anyway – there ya go!