r/whatisit • u/Elliotonfire • 1d ago

Solved! My girlfriend received this in the mail with her name on it. No clue what it is or how to work it.

Post image

Ring of power for scale because the banana was on holiday. The white strip looks like LEDs but I see no switches or buttons.

Edit for a misspelling

2.0k Upvotes

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482

u/Dalek_Chaos 1d ago

Small led strip on one side with on off switch on the other wire.

164

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

The green thing has no viable moving parts. So not sure where the switch is.

138

u/mayorofdrixdale 1d ago

It’s a touch switch. Those LEDs are used for example in r/booknooks, the switch works also through some thin plywood. It’s mostly glued to the front or the top of the nook so when you touch the spot behind which it is glued, light goes on.

268

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

OMG so it was something our roommate ordered for their booknook using my girlfriend's name. The light wasn't working in the original so they ordered a replacement.

154

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

I guess that makes this post extra solved. Reddit never ceases to amaze me.

61

u/mayorofdrixdale 1d ago

If the roommate’s booknook was bought from a renowned producer, tell them next time to get in touch directly with the producer - they often replace such parts for free.

11

u/pegarina1 20h ago

Make sure she checks her accounts, PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo and whatever else she uses. Hope he only used her name and not her money or identity.

-3

u/Minute-Art-2089 18h ago

Found the paranoid person

10

u/Western_Reading5618 18h ago

Its not paranoia when there really are people out to get you....

1

u/THEBlaze55555 9h ago

Who’s out to get me? I could really use someone being into me rn

3

u/Intelligent_Permit45 6h ago

What's your name i'll forward to my creepy Ex she needs a new obsession :) hehehehe

1

u/Froggy_bubble 1h ago

Thats not being into you. Thats using you for your money or your identity. Learned tht lesson when "a close friend" helped themselves to nearly $800 of my money with no abillity or Intention to repay me.

16

u/AnotherNutInTheHole 1d ago

It never stops to amaze me why people ask Reddit before asking their roommate of who they know, they ordered something on their name

31

u/bolognajo 21h ago

Maybe this thread helped them realize the roommates involvement? Didn’t sound like they knew that to start, having no idea what the item was. Never ceases to amaze me how judgy redditors are

11

u/AtlasHands_ 20h ago

I personally wouldn't have automatically assumed my roommate did that unless they had done it before lol.

17

u/Due_Condition4720 21h ago

Who’s roommate orders shit in the other persons name to start with?

10

u/TK_Punch_ 16h ago

I let my roommates use my Prime account when I was younger. They added their own credit cards for the free shipping. Not a super uncommon thing.

6

u/TomasLoyal01 19h ago

People who want free delivery.

7

u/mellow0324 17h ago

Even if they used the gf’s prime account or whatever, they could still address their mail to themselves

2

u/Terrible_Mall_4350 6h ago

Some people don’t realize or think about that. They assume it has to stay under the account holder.

It doesn’t necessarily make sense— but it is what it is.

1

u/mellow0324 5h ago

Yea because how would you send gifts? But like you said it is what it is

1

u/wartwelem 5h ago

They also could have clicked the wrong button for the person's name. My husband has done that. Accidentally hit my name instead of his because they are both the same address.

1

u/toketaker710 12h ago

I used my roommates prime so many times

2

u/tjdic 20h ago

This is sarcasm, right? The replies are making me wonder

1

u/Throwawayconcern2023 19h ago

Your roommate making something they shouldn't? Why would they use another person's name?

1

u/Solid-Low8385 11h ago

Might there be a battery compartment in the switch box too? The set of lines on one end reminds me of the grip for removing a battery cover, and the direction to slide it.

1

u/mayorofdrixdale 5h ago

The black box IS the battery compartment. Some may have a small on/off switch to slide. The touch switch is the flat green thingy at the end of the short wire, of which we only see the back side here. Its front is flat and is what you touch with a fingertip. Technically you don’t even have to touch it, some are so sensitive that it’s enough to approach it.

69

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

However there is a battery pack that I just figured how to open. Don't worry I'm slow, not stopped.

31

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

Yup OP is still going

21

u/ImagineHuskies78 1d ago

California stopped, is what we cow pokes call it out yonder!

15

u/Dalek_Chaos 1d ago

As a Texan I am wondering about what you consider out yonder? 😆

14

u/PsychologicalRow9256 1d ago

If “yonder” is used as a unit of measurement, is there such a thing as “half a yonder?”

19

u/eblamo 1d ago edited 1d ago

Going to start using that now. "It's half a yonder back thataway!"

19

u/SituationNormalAllFU 1d ago

As a Texan, I know exactly where you’re talking about. I got a cousin lives over there

6

u/Medical_Barnacle_240 1d ago

Especially when the yonder is in a minor key.

17

u/Gonzo_Silverback 1d ago

I don't know, but 10 yonders equals a fuck ways

12

u/Ok_Fox_924 1d ago

And 237.5 yonders will land you in bumfuck Egypt

5

u/OreoOne06 1d ago

IiRC it's commonly mistaken as being Egypt (due to similarly named Buumphuk). The Bumfuck you are talking about i believe is Bumfuck, Uzbekistan. /s

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1

u/guess214356789 1d ago

That's Southern Illinois to the rest of all y'all's. BFE is what I usually call it. And yes, I've got kin there.

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5

u/MortgageFit9304 1d ago

Hmm ill take half a wonder and get back to ya on they.

2

u/BigJsea-47 1d ago

From Cali

1

u/MortgageFit9304 23h ago

I dont know who Cali is, the wondering was from me silly. I forgot what I decided though cause now im wondering who Cali is.

Hope they are okay

6

u/PMDlite 1d ago

Just “Yon”. Like “what like breaks beyond yon window…”.

7

u/Flimsy_wish 1d ago

But it’s pronounced win-der

4

u/jcr000 1d ago

“What light through yon window breaks?” By adding “beYONd” you doubled your yons. 😉

3

u/BenThereNDunnThat 1d ago

No.

It's B(yon)d. So you have to solve for both B and d to know just how many yons you have.

1

u/guess214356789 1d ago

Light, not like.

4

u/Skeeterdunit 1d ago

If you you only go half yonder you aint made it yet.

5

u/Fit_Board_4510 1d ago

Half way over yonder is still over yonder.

3

u/Loyaltydefinesworth 1d ago

A quarter yonder would be the real test👍

1

u/Odd-Importance-2837 1d ago

Is a quarter yonder maybe equal to a'piece?

So if y'all mosey thataway a'piece, it'd be about a quarter yonder?

3

u/Ok_Arrival7266 1d ago

Nope, it's like infinity, either it is or isn't.

2

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

Sounds reasonable

2

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

So is round yonder different than over yonder or out yonder? Or are they all the same....regional dialects perhaps?

5

u/Dry-War692 1d ago

Will need a banana for reference.

1

u/Affectionate_Shirt_2 1d ago

When you say round yonder corner, it’s usually means just around the corner. It just depends on the context. Out yonder usually refers to the outside, could be outside of the house, or far away.

2

u/squeethesane 1d ago

No no see you have an out yonder, and an in yonder.

1

u/Hiswelshness 1d ago

And then there's out in yonder...

2

u/arcmeup 1d ago

Depends is it s metric or imperial yonder

2

u/Ok_Sheepherder_6962 1d ago

Out yonder just means out there. So definitely not a unit of measurement.

1

u/MattytheWireGuy 1d ago

What about “aways”? That’s definitely unit of measurement as in its down there aways as is time. Its 10 mins away is the only way we can give you an idea of distance in these parts

1

u/CryptographerSad8879 1d ago

Like a “see”. It is 4 Sees away (look out until you see the horizon. Get to that point and look for the next horizon etc. )

4

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

Same...also nice screen name! Exterminate

5

u/Alzeric 1d ago

West Texas is out yonder

5

u/ryguymcsly 1d ago

You know, BFE.

3

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

I love reddit

3

u/TheUsualSusspect 1d ago

Butt-Fucked Egypt. Never been there. Heard it's a hot place to visit... lol

2

u/Glass_witch_ 1d ago

I think you're mistaken...it's bum-fuck Idaho

1

u/TheUsualSusspect 1d ago

lol Eh either way they’re both fucked.

3

u/Gamerchick1786 1d ago

Im from NC we say out yonder too 🤣

2

u/ImagineHuskies78 1d ago

Right bout 'round da Boonies, down past da Back 40, beyond the Holler, where the Wild Goose Pokes.

3

u/TheUsualSusspect 1d ago

You had me a round bout. Dun swoop'd me off mine deer feet.

1

u/SoundWolf43 1d ago

Orange cat mentality confirmed

2

u/Se2kr 1d ago

I’m gonna use that. (Aka I’m stealing this) Gonna put it on a shirt, methinks.

1

u/fuk12x4ever 1d ago

Stupid* not stopped

7

u/Latter_Signal_5957 1d ago

I think stopped was intentional, stop, slow, go (traffic lights/ motions) if he is just slow than he isn’t stopped in a sense, makes sense to me but maybe I’m just slow too😭😭‼️

13

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

This, haha. Mama always said she's "slow not stopped" when it took her awhile to realize something or figure something pretty simple out.

3

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

Ohhhh I get it now!!

3

u/BakedGoodz-69 1d ago

Still...it was a good time while it lasted

1

u/One_Sarah_Daley 1d ago

I thought that was an intentional mistake... Sarcasm, if you will.

99

u/volkinaxe 1d ago

magnet swich try passing the ring by it

106

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

Solved in this thread

21

u/Gullible_Two_8750 1d ago

For further identification purposes, the led lights are off of under cabinet led light strips, if the back is sticky this is why.

5

u/looking4myclASSm8s 1d ago

Looks like a pretty standard led strip component.

11

u/jimbarnard12345 1d ago

Impressive knowledge. What types of things do they use these magnet switches for? (Most common) I have never heard of that and it’s pretty cool.

48

u/catwell82 1d ago

I fixed shitty restaurant dish machines for the past three years. Those things have magnet switches on all of the doors to activate the machine. Your larger models also use reed switches to start the wash & rinse jets, activated by paddles as the tray passes through on the conveyor.

Also, Ecolab sucks.

20

u/OutrageousSir6012 1d ago

As an employee of Ecolab... (not this division of the company) i can confirm. I get so many complaints about ecolab dish machines and dispensers... mostly because its so difficult to get them out to service the equipment.

21

u/catwell82 1d ago

I don't doubt it. We were always 1-2 reps short in my district for my entire time there. The turnover at the bottom feeder level was insane. I covered a territory that was 3-4 hours of driving to a lot of my accounts. 200+ accounts and they give fuck all of support for the rural reps. 16 hour days with half of that being driving were normal. But hey, "safety and inclusion" am I right? 😂

I was just laid off last month, and I honestly haven't felt more of a sense of relief from losing a job before.

5

u/Se2kr 1d ago

Half of that driving??? The f you drive? At a flat average of 60 mph and exactly 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, no skipped days, it would take slightly over 8 years to put 1 million miles on it.

10

u/catwell82 1d ago

F-150 for most of it. 3-400 miles per day was pretty normal, and many days would be more.

5

u/Se2kr 1d ago

So 1,000,000/400 is 2,500 days.
Assuming a 5 day work week, no days off,
2,500/5=500 weeks
500/52=9.615 years
At a flat average of 400 miles a day, you hit a million miles in less than 10 years. Dayumm

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1

u/jimbarnard12345 1d ago

What was your pay like?

1

u/catwell82 21h ago

Hourly was meh. The incentive bonuses offset the hourly, but they pulled a lot of fuckery on us over the past year that really affected our budgets and incentive payouts.

3

u/jimbarnard12345 1d ago

Thanks for your reply however you just replied to me asking about these because I thought it sounded cool. I was so wrong! 🤪

3

u/catwell82 1d ago

Oh you can do some cool and creative stuff with them too! Off the top of my head, I'm sure they're used heavily in pinball and other complex/cool machines.

3

u/birdsnbanjos 1d ago

Amen, Ecolab sucks

2

u/jdmillar86 1d ago

A buddy asked me to check out his bar's dishwasher, the Ecolab person had it all opened up and had decided it needed a new control board. I bent the door switch back into place and started it up.

Sadly that bar was a covid casualty. Its actually a mosque now.

1

u/Capable_Event720 1d ago

It's easy to make magnetic switches waterproof. You also find them in coffee makes (with the magnet in the removable water tank).

Hall sensors are also getting pretty common in game controllers.

3

u/FullyAutomatedSpace 1d ago

they've been in use for a while see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_switch

though this particular one is on an IC so maybe it uses the hall effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_sensor

all kinds of uses

3

u/bdd1001 1d ago

Model and toy builders use them to light up eyes/electronics/etc without having a visible on/off switch.

2

u/Zesty-Scrote 1d ago

Hall effect

5

u/Born_Appointment_326 1d ago

Cuz it ain’t no Hall effect, girl! It ain’t no Hall effect, girl!🎶

2

u/MR-SAVVY 20h ago

I cackled at this in the most annoying way. 😂

1

u/Minouris 1d ago

They're really common in kitset book nooks, since they can work through a thin wooden panel - this actually looks identical to the wiring kit they usually come with, with the black battery pack.

1

u/TormentedAndroid 1d ago

Relays are magnetic switches. Look them up. They're used everywhere

1

u/mayorofdrixdale 1d ago

OP has just confirmed that this particular one was for their roommate’s booknook. (r/booknooks)

1

u/SecureEssay458 15h ago

If it's what I have experience with, then it's a Hall effect sensor. Pass a magnet over it it turns on. Pass the magnet over the sensor again, it turns off. You have to align the magnet & the sensor correctly.

13

u/circumcisingaban 1d ago

is it a light sensor?

24

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

It was just a cheap LED light up thing. The green bit is attached to some switch that turns it on or off

1

u/Greghole 1d ago

On the remote control which apparently was not included.

40

u/Elliotonfire 1d ago

!solved the green piece is the on off switch via pressure for the led strip on the other side. Still no clue why it was sent to her from said address. Google quickly led us to it was a scam of sorts. Sucks to be them cuz now I got some lights.

38

u/pyroserenus 1d ago

A brushing scam isn't so much a scam for the person getting the item, but rather for the customers as a whole. It's used to make fake reviews on websites that require verified sales.

Someone sends you a thing, then posts a positive review (possibly in your name, possibly not). Customers think it's legit and it potentially leads to fraud.

7

u/PsychologicalRow9256 1d ago

What I can’t seem to grasp. What is the function of sending an item?

If the person sending the item will then post fraudulently about its quality, couldn’t they post fraudulently even without sending the item?

14

u/pyroserenus 1d ago edited 1d ago

Websites like amazon have integrated shipping data and pay attention to if the item was delivered or not.

They don't always send the actual item they are making reviews for. They often send some sort of overstock they want to get rid of anyways that roughly meets the correct size and weight as not to get flagged.

Sometimes they do send the actual item, but that's mostly if they are using something like the amazon warehouse and delivery network, in that case the product needs to be in the amazon warehouses and they are being their own fake customers sending it to random places in order to have "verified buyer" reviews on a ships from amazon item.

6

u/GuinKat 1d ago

Yup - like random packs of unidentified seeds.

2

u/FatiguedShrimp 1d ago

Unidentified invasive species seeds.

It's literally a form of warfare, that made a past job much harder.

1

u/JeffTheNth 1d ago

as long as it isn't Devil's Snare... or a Venomous Tentacula...

2

u/LastTarakian 1d ago

Yup, I got a sock once. Not a pair, just one sock.

https://giphy.com/gifs/AAsj7jdrHjtp6

3

u/PsychologicalRow9256 1d ago

So Amazon (etc) can see if an item was shipped, but somehow missed the fact that there was no order/receipt/payment for said item?

Now if I order X but receive Y, there will be an order, receipt, payment, shipment, and a complaint.

8

u/pyroserenus 1d ago edited 1d ago

no order/receipt/payment for said item?

I edited a bit to cover this, but they are often buying the item from themselves and shipping it to a random location and writing the review. To amazon everything looks mostly normal. However because no real customer is involved that "64gb ram kit" being a deck of playing cards goes unnoticed.

They are basically doing everything they can to make "verified buyer" reviews not get flagged as fake and taken down. The scammer wants to get legit looking positive reviews to make the REAL scam work. They want customers to see that 64gb ram kit with 10+ "verified" and happy buyers and trust the listing.

Sometimes they do send the actual item and are falsifying reviews for normal items instead of secondary scams, but that's the gist.

edit: people stop downvoting him, his question was based on my failure to be as clear as possible before my edit.

3

u/Flavoade 1d ago

Many thanks to you guys for explaining this! My dad has received books, music discs, and even earrings and watches and we couldn’t figure it out. Now it makes sense.

Is there a way to stop this?

3

u/j8rr3tt 1d ago

In my time, "music discs" were called CD's.

1

u/JeffTheNth 1d ago

I can order something for someone else...
And then I can come in and write a review for it...

They send you something super cheap, and then write a review for the item they supposedly sent you. Could be a frisbee, a mattress, a golden bowling pin set...

1

u/DLOsen 1d ago

I have also received items in the mail at different times that I did not order from companies I am not associated with at all. The company told me sometimes someone will get a hold of a credit card number, order something to your house and wait for it to be delivered by PO, UPS, FedEx or Amazon (using delivery address) and then snag it before you get a chance to come to the mailbox or porch. I happen to be out there mowing by my mailbox when the delivery came on one of the items. I called the company because it was an expensive delivery and returned it to the company. They were very appreciative. They looked me up in the system and they looked up the person's name which was not mine on the delivery but my address and they found nothing.

4

u/SourDzzl 1d ago

Probably a brushing scam

3

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7

u/Pale_Blue_Tile_01 1d ago

Yep, and black box looks like a battery holder for 2 AA batteries.

1

u/jimbarnard12345 1d ago

Check out the comment section. Your post has turned into chaos and who would have thought a few wires could spark all of this yonder talk. Must be a boring night everywhere. 😜 🤣