The only youtuber to actually use the circle in a thumbnail to point out the problem instead of clickbaiting, good work

Years ago, when a fellow had to work on his own car because the thought of allowing a "garage" to work on it was just plain distasteful, some times you had to access the "relay" box on the car that kicked in the "generator" (pre alternator cars you know) and perhaps bend the contact a bit, or even file them since they looked a lot like points on the old 50's cars. This was my first exposure to relays, and I have loved the little devices ever since. I was in hog heaven when the US Army sent me to PROJECT Transition, an attempt to ready soldiers who had served their tour and were getting ready to return to the real world, for a job where they could fit in. After all who needs a soldier who knows how to tear down an M60 machine gun, or a M16, and know tactics to stay alive on the battle ground. Not a lot of that sort of jobs in the civilian market. At any rate they sent me to a central office repair course, which was on the job training in two central telephone offices. Both ran the old Automatic Electric switching systems with relays reading the dial pulses to find the numbers in huge banks of switches. It was a blast, but never really did me a lot of good considering I went right to work on the Police Department when I got out of the Army. But man those switches, watching them climb and rotate to find numbers it was out of this world!

Fifteen minute video about relays. Only time they're switched is to check how they sound. Never change, Clive!

I feel they missed an opportunity ... Omnom relays sound so tasty

I know what you mean about the joy of listening to relays operate. A few times in the 90's I was lucky enough to visit operating crossbar telephone exchanges (Ericsson 'ARE') . The sound of the relays all working together, sounded like ocean waves crashing back and forth through the exchange room as phone calls were set up and cleared down. It was very cool.

A note about resistor wattage rating: they are rated mounted in free air (off the board). With a relativelly normal airflow. This one is burried in plastic, thru limited airflow. This will reduce quite alot the wattage rating. Derating is a pain.

My grandfather worked for the phone company eons ago and it was fun to go into one of the switching buildings and listen to the banks of relays clicking away. Positively noisy at times!

The genuine Omrons with AC coils i have here use a couple of turns of enamelled wire around the main coil supplying a couple of volts in isolation to the led. A more elegant solution.

I wanted to get some for a relais computer in Shenzhen. They asked me if I wanted original Omron, fake with Omron branding, or the dirt cheap compatible stuff :) I bought the dirtcheap stuff - but it was not really worth it. 20% just stuck after a while in normal operation. Not problematic for a hobby project, but imagine this happening in an elevator or worse - in a heavy industrial machine.

If you love the sound of relays, you would have loved the tour of the switching room of our local phone company that I took years and years ago. It was when they had rotary phones, which made a relay click multiple times each time a digit was dialed on a phone. I lived in a town of 100,000 people and the noise of relays was loud and continuous. As a side benefit, they didn't need a heating system in the winter, because the heat generated kept the half block square, three story tall room warm even in -15c (0f) weather!

I think everyone loves relays. Need to switch high power directly on and off - Relay. Need something that doesn't care about AC or DC - Relay. Need something with a bit of built in hysteresis - Relay. Need something that doesn't get hot, or need a heatsink - Relay. They're my go to component for practically anything. Especially automotive circuits.

Ok, so the various manufactureers can Knock-Off an entire relay...but cant figure out the value of LEDs resistor????!!!!!....GEEEZE!

eBay has so many cool ways to set myself on fire. I never would've thought of half of this stuff as a kid.

I also love electromechanical devices, probably stems from when I was a child and my dad used to take me to work with him at BT in the 80’s, I remember being mesmerised by racks of Strowger switches clattering away.

that omrch didn't feel as brave as every other chinese company

Don't really care about relays. I just put your videos to the background because of your relaxing voice.

Thank you for _relaying_ this issue.

So you could say, those fakes are Omwrong... :P

"The spudger can open all" 100% accurate, best tool ever.

Who needs to watch any ASMR videos when a BigClive video does a far better at relaxing oneself?

I bought a reject air conditioner window unit with dead, electronics on the cheap over ten years ago. To operate it, I bought a DPDT 12vdc relay from RadioShack for 120vac-240vac, 12vdc power supply, and a digital thermostat (battery powered) with just simple speaker wire as a thermostat line. The contacts were only rated for 10amps so I split the hot to two contacts and recombined them. I also added a separate relay of the same type to run the fan independently of the compressor. RadioShack didn't provide a relay base so I just crimped on spade connectors to wires, and they showed no sign of getting hot. I am still using the same relays, and the only real change I made was to put them into a grounded metal box because the relay switching was interfering with my TV and reception. The electronics on window units is far more reliable not so getting brain dead air conditioners on the cheap is likely a thing of the past. I still find this exterior thermostat control superior to internal thermostats except that I used to have issue with evaporator freeze over on occasion. Using one of those cheap Chinese thermostats probing the temperature of the coils solved that problem.

you could Set them up in a certain order and get them to play a tune

You gotta specify concert pitch when ordering or they'll all be out of tune.

I put a 24 v DC one in a recent project and was amused to see that it was marked as made by 'ONROM' - I put it through exhaustive testing and must admit that it worked fine !!!

IVery interesting video, as usual. If I remember rightly, from my training as a GPO telephone engineer in the 60s, placing a metal ring around the armature end of a relay coil made it "slow-to-release". Placing it at the other end made it "slow-to-operate and slow-to-release". Re the LED series resistor, I remember reading that metal-film resistors have a voltage limit of 250 volts, even if they're operating well within their wattage rating. I believe the resistance tends to fall if they repeatedly exceed this, as they would on 220-240 volt AC mains.

Clive, I like how you printed out your FLIR images for this video. Most people would add it in editing later, but your way makes your presentation really professional.

Clive. Your intro and thumbnails are absolutely perfect. Nice job.

The school I clean has an older 2-floor elevator, and since I have a set of master keys for the whole building, I couldn't **not** snoop around in the control room for it, so I got to see the 2 dozen or so relays that control it. It was quite fascinating.

I like these style of relays. Nice to be able to pop a new module in without having to pull any wires off. They are also fun to overload and watch the coils burn up in a sealed air pocket. That's how I learned you can use a high voltage on a low voltage coil; but only once and only for a short time!

Why do I feel like Clive builds giant fighting robots in his free time, we just see this benign simple stuff he does when he's feeling lazy... GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS!!

My dad used to work for the GPO - so I got to experience Strowger Exchanges occasionally - which also produce interesting electromechanical sounds.

It used to drive me crazy, when I opened up an electrical panel for an elevator in the penthouse of a building, and the buzzing was so loud from the relays, that you had to put earplugs in. You could put your finger on the relays and tell which ones they were, but they still worked, so nobody ever hauled 20-30 of them up the steps to replace them. One day I got tired of it and did. I found that there was a small hairline crack in the shading coil, at the corner of each buzzing relay, where it wrapped around the rectangular AC armature in the relay. A drop of solder made the noise go away, but I never found out why the copper ring cracked. The crack was so small, it was almost undetectable

Bwahaha - WTF moment of the day = Clive's controlling my lights?!?!?! At the same second as you plugged in the 240V relay (click) to show it's power consumption my timer turned on the roof lights!

I spent about 6 hours at a factory replacing the led current limiting resistors that had gone faulty on relays, dirty crusty ol' relays...eh..... a freelance jobs a job.

Started my working life in a strowager telephone exchange. It was like the 4th road bridge, by the time you'd "fettled" all the relay controlled switches it was time to start again. Big soldering Irons and tiny spring gauges and odd looking pliers for tweaking the different springs. Incredibly noisy, gawd I was glad to get out of there. Now I'm told they're like morgues, the only sound is the cooling fans, you can go days and not see another soul ... gawd I'm glad I never worked there.

I hit the motherload of potter and brumfield relays, in my grandpa's garage, they are quite good quality, some were made in america and others in mexico, but they all work rather well for how old they are. Some of them also have AMF the bowling system company, written on them. Anything from Omron is very good quality, I use Makita power tools on a daily basis, and they all use Omron triggers, while other bands like Milwakee use cheap chinese triggers. My Makita Impact driver is about 11 years old and it still works really well, and I still have the original battery, and that works great as well. The bottom line is if you use good quality componets they will last a very long time as apposed to their cheap counterparts. I think its good Clive, that you are telling people about these issues, I know many people who have bought something cheap, and think its the real deal, but its actually a fake.

BigClive thanks for pointing this out. It annoys me beyond words when rip-off artists try a clone a good quality product, and end up with crap - that then reflects on the real manufacturer.

I used to have a fruit machine that had nothing but relays in the back of it, was mesmerising listening to them all working away

I do like that they're transparent. It makes it easier to diagnose if there are problems; if the contacts are stuck or arc more than they should you can easily tell. But yeah, that LED circuit is a good way to burn your house down. Actually... is there such a thing as a 5mm LED with multiple junctions in series inside it? Would make a lot of sense in a resistive dropper circuit.

I once hooked up a panel of 16 relays to an Arduino that was programmed to open and close one relay at a time at an interval of 65 milliseconds. The sound was very similar to that of a Harley Davidson motorcycle idling over. quite satisfying LOL

If you want to keep that steady light in the LED, you could opt for 3x33k 1/4W in series. Seems to be just enough space replacing the downlead to the base.

I bought some fused 30A relays from ebay to take the load off of the headlamps and the heater motor on my old Reliant Robin, the heater motor just fused the relays solid on the lowest setting and the headlamp relays melted, none of them blew the fuse but burnt out the contacts which looked like tin foil... never again, found some NOS Lucas relays on ebay and they have worked beautifully ever since. Once upon a time Lucas was a byword in quality and pretty much the end word on anything automotive electrical too, now only remembered on classic cars although they are still making stuff as I bought a brand new Lucas brake light switch recently but bet its made on the QT in Taiwan or China.

Thumbs-down people buy their relays from Omrch.

Luckily I saw this vid. I built a digital programmer/thermostat for my central heating system and it uses a 240v coil relay that I bought via ebay. I thought it was an Omron device but on closer inspection it says 'Onrom' and the resistor is overheated exactly as you showed in your vid. I've removed the indicator circuit from the relay and I'm ordering a new one from RS. Thanks Clive! By the way you sound uncannily like Sideshow Kev (don't know if you've been told that before).

Little tip: Numbers on OMRON relays are printed in a form of OCR font. Very distinctive font. Noticed that with those in my car.

My better half Andy and myself Alex loves watching your Chanel. I used to serially loved electrocuting myself on the mains when taking things apart as a teenager.I love watching what you do as it brings back a little of my overall naughtiness. Enjoying what you do and the soda stream has never looked so good.

Can you blow something up with your comedic and sarcastic chat in a future video, makes me laugh every time. Keep up the good work.

I like relays too. Used to have some which were wired as a logic circuit. Each one was a latching bistable switch. Quite ingenious. The first digital computer was German, and it used relay logic, with a clock speed of 1Hz.

Indeed, you get what you pay for. I purchased "Omron" time delay relays from amazon, they were obviously counterfeit since the genuine articles cost 6x the price but I was curious to see what they were all about. And they didn't work.

I've used the 12v Omron clones, and are usable for small non critical projects, the screw terminals on the relay bases are loose and awful, but do still work, I would not switch 240V with them, but are ok for low energy 12V applications like reversing polarity on a dc motor, at just a few amps.

Very grateful for this. Thankfully I mostly use the 12 volt ones and the one 240v one I currently have is driven from a PIR so I'll be OK unless I get a persistent nocturnal visit from the JWs - though since it's socketed I have no excuse to not fix it. Scarily I originally bought it to switch my computer sound off at night in my bedroom so I could use a cheap mains timeswitch . I may look for an app instead ....

i like relais alot too they are easy to work with and such. i have a old amplifier which has about 3 or so realis in it and everytime you turn the amp on after 2 seconds the realis clicks to turn the output on and you everytime time just feel like you feel the thing living and working and so, very pleasing indeed haha

Resistor power rating is based on being mounted above a PCB at moderate temperature. Encased as it is, it must be derated to less than half; especially next to the hot coil.

Damn..... i am gonna double check the faulty elevator omron relays that were recently replaced by the technician. Hope they are not this kind of fakes! Yikes!!!!!! Thanks for this video!

@10:45 Aw, come-on Clive, you mean you don't have one of those fancy schmancy XRF alloy identification tools sitting around?

CEMF is the impedance, , but you knew that... Thanks again for the good work.

I have loved Omron switches for decades and try my hardest to get them when I can. Lasts for a long time so I would prefer a real Omron relay if I ever had a need of a mechanical one.

Relays aren't the only thing that gets cloned like that. Awhile ago I purchased a few micro switches to replace the ones in my mouse. What came to my doorstep was surely enough labeled as a genuine Omron part. Having installed one and tested it I found it didn't work at all. This set me to testing the rest with a multimeter to check the quality. Only 5 out of the lot of 30 worked properly. I took one of the nonworking ones to bits out of curiosity to see if I could work out why they were nackered right. What I found was that they were so oxidized that they couldn't make proper contact. I tried de-ox-it which didn't work. Then I gave Tarnex a go with no luck. I finally worked round to using brake cleaner and a small bristle brush to get whatever it was off just to see if I could get one working reliably. Alcohol and even acetone had no effect on it though and the acetone damaged the plastic. Needless to say I chuckled the lot in the bin and never ordered anything from that seller again.

Ahh relay logic, very handy devices :-D I've pushed them into service for many odd jobs.

15° ambient in da bungalow?! Must be almost tropical for you Clive!

I enjoy older relays for the same reason I enjoy old mechanical keyboards (the IBM Model F for example), because they're loud and other people find them annoying.

Yep, spent my time looking after control systems that used a lot of relays and contactors, including Cam timers (there's another subject for you), including lift controls. Nothing more satisfying than a motor breaker at 400A clunking in and out :D

Clickering.....the sound of multiple relays being used in anger. Someone has a shelf, and on that shelf it a box, and that box contains tens of thousands of resistors. All the same value. It does not matter what, That factory owner needs to use them up now. In anything...to offset the loss.

electromechanical stuff is very satisfying. I think it's seeing the actual changes mechanically unlike in electronics that gives that happy juice rush.

7:35 "I can resist anything except temptation." Oscar Wilde. Also: the little nuts to hold the contacts into the plastic are probably set into it with an ultrasonic gadget. This Old Tony has done videos about DIY ultrasonic stuff. He didn't get his working the way the real ones do, but it was pretty neat nonetheless.

Great relay research Clive. Thanks.

I have found that TME is a very good source of electronic components if you want to buy a bit more than hobbyist quantities but not production numbers. I have been ordering from them for about 2 years with never a hiccup. The only thing you need to make sure of is that what you want is in stock as sometimes their stock refreshing is very slow. They are competitive with some of the Chinese vendors EG a bay of 500 LED's for about £10.

Maybe you could send one of those to Cody to see what metal is used. He might be able to use his X-ray fluorescence spectrometer on it.

After powering one of these ebay clones up you need to consider these a momentary relay application. These are not designed to run continuous more then 5 minute lengths without incuring heat soak. So they work great just for switching, not holding.

The LED color in original Omron relays is an indicator for the relay coil mode, AC is red and DC is green.

You'd most likely have to derate the max power for the resistor because it's wrapped in plastic and therefore can't efficiently dissipate the heat. The long legs is a mitigating factor though.

Spudger - Wand - usable by anyone. Effect: void seal.

Clive, I suspect you would have enjoyed working in a relay based CrossBar (or Step by Step) Telephone Exchange. I liked listening to the ebb and flow as the call were switched during the course of the day. Could almost set your watch based on the sound. Sadly not to be heard by anyone anymore, at least not in Australia and in 2022 apparently the pstn will be switched off. edit ...I read below that you are familiar with exchanges.

4:28 if anyone is curious, here's calculating the inductance from that: 15mA 248V, 10,000ohm real impedance so V/I=R= 248/15*10^-3=16.53kOhm first have to figure out what the inductive component is using pythag: hypotenuse is the total impedance, one of the sides is real impedance, and the other will be inductive impedance. c²-a² = b² = 13.16kOhm (complex impedance = 10,000 + j13,160 ohms) for a sine wave you can use 2πfl for reactance at 50hz: 2π50l = 13.16kOhm 13,160/(2π50) = l = 41.9H (now hopefully i did it right this maths has a lot of places you can mess the whole calculation up)

that was informative , I go through so many relays at work didn't relies that about the crap ones. I always seem to use omrons

Relays are great for performing simple logic functions at mains voltages. Got some performing logic OR functions in my heating system.

I remember someone made a relay based computer a while ago. That was really cool.

My first experience of viewing "click and bang" was as a child watching a strowger switching system (phone.) Must say, I do miss the old electromechanical days as well! No fun watching a SSR operate! ;)

Use *lots* of the Omron MY4N-120VAC and MY2N-120VAC at work. Still have many relay safety interlocks which are separate from the PLC and DCS systems.

Speaking of mechanical delicacies - it's a shame there aren't any dirt-cheap Chinese rotary phone dials on Ebay (or Poundland) to acquire and review... ;)

The relays in the elevators AKA lifts here in the US are big three phase contactors and they don't click, they go Kerchunk! And scare the crap out of you if they actuate while you're near. Big, noisy hydraulic pumps start to run and that really gets your attention! 😡

We had an omron relay fail on a brand new auto transfer switch. Lit the thing up in a new house, quite exciting.

The Watt LED Measurement may be off, the LED does have a reverse voltage breakdown, however, without the datasheet, you can not just assume it's 220. S better solution may have been to add a diode rated to 400 volts, to the line.

I have had a problem with the REAL OMRON relays, since they outsourced the manufacture to Malaysia. I have had issues with arcing and pitting on the contacts and having unmatched return springs which seem to cause early degradation. Maybe those aren't fake?

Hey, BigClive -- can I ask a favor? Can you do a reliability test on the contacts of these Not-Omron relays? I've been buying them for a project (can't afford better) and the project keeps not working with known good wiring diagrams -- I'm beginning to suspect that there's more issues to these than just a resistor problem. FWIW, I'm using 12vDC examples...

try running 2 of These AC Relais in series... i bet they will work propperly, and they just labled the 110V one into 240

I initially misread that as 'making omnom relays' (I suppose they look quite sweetie like in the thumbnail)

In my humble opinion you should've also added a 1n4007 in series with the led. The 240 volt relays wouldn't be too bad with their cases removed and some fans.

I just got a relay system for some lights, I'm going to use it for the light bar, and a reverse light, I might replace the fuses and I'll take a look at the relays now after seeing this.

Such a shame real Omrons were not purchased and compared. I unintentionally installed a chinese knock-off a few years ago as a motor controller on a projector screen. It worked for about 6 month then failed. Basically the whole thing melted and disintegrated. Definitely a fire hazard. I replaced it with Genuine Omron and its been working fine for around 5 years now.

Musical relays, sounds like a great name for a band. When's the album out? I loved that song "clickety, click-click". Fantastic, Prog Rock at its best

Big thanks, Clive

I don't like the idea of an LED and resistor across the mains. The peak mains voltage is about 350V. I am not sure LEDs take kindly to 350V of reverse bias on a long term basis. A good quality 1/4 W through hole resistor has a 500V rating - so that's OK, or is it? Actually marginal depending on mains quality. A chinese cheap 1/4 W resistor possibly pushes against both the power and voltage rating limits. The 12V relays, of which I have several, seem to be quite good value. Mine are only switching 12V at an amp or two and I am not sure how long they will last but I think they are good enough.

The FLIR photo is so vivid it almost looks photoshopped. Cool.

Have you thought about putting a small ring light around the lens of your camera? It would be useful to illuminate these kinds of recessed components without having to chew on a flash light.

Presumably another solution for the resistor issue would be to add a series mains rated diode - half the dissipation but no loss of brightness.

did you ever get a chance to visit a Strowger exchange Clive ? I grew up around them as my dad managed one of them - and then I had a summer job cleaning airdrie, Cumbernauld and Coatbridge exchanges in 1988 - when Airdrie was still an active strowger -so spent most of the summer wandering about it/cleaning up patch wire off the floor, etc. I liked watching them indexing up and down - REAL connections. REAL calls being made - and there was always some engineer who'd have patched in his speaker box into a random unit so we could all listen to someones calls! quality. Airdrie was being converted when I left- one solitary fridge sized system X box to replace two massive whole rooms full of strowgers. By the time I left they'd nearly finished stripping out all the strowgers - just 2 big empty floors and the wee system X box. I imagine exchange is closed now completely :-(

I have tried 12VDC ones, and found the contact between the pins and the relay base to be poor and they burn out. Also the relays after a little use fail to pull in, some times they work some times they don't. The relay base screw terminals are very loose, and its not 10Amps as claimed either more like 5Amps max.

Why don't they put the LED in series with the coil? A shunt resistor could be placed on the LED to protect it a bit from back EMF and would allow the LED to operate more within the appropriate current range of 5 to 10mA.

Hey Clive, can you make a video about your printing technique? and detail photography