The self checkout belts here they have an infra-red beam and sensor at the checkout end of the belt, you can activate it with your hand even! When there is no weight on the belt, it stops. You can push down with your hand and it moves when there is nothing on it. Not sure about the older ones though.

 Last week anyways . I swapped out the Lithonia Pre-heat twin F8T5 fixture in my kitchen  ( https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5198&pos=217&pid=169890 ) for a no name F14T5 instant start fixture I got from ReStore for $3 .  The Lithonia kept eating the same lamp and I got tired of replacing it . The new fixture came with a Keystone 841 T5 tube and a ElCheapo Keystone electronic ballast ( the one that is just a circuit board mounted on a plate with a piece of plastic around it so someone can't electrocute themselves . The new fixture uses less wattage and is brighter .

Toggle switch turns the on and off.  An infrared beam sensor at the end pauses the belt when products reach the end.

Yeah that’s what I remember seeing many years ago, was light switch style switches with stainless steel plate. I’ve also seen somewhere, a rocker switch somewhere on top of the counter to possibly control the belt.

I’ve seen standard spec grade light switches and pedals used. I haven’t really been paying attention to how they might be controlled recently.

In store checkout line with conveyor belt, what makes the belt start and stop moving? I would assume there is a sensor beam at the end that stops it moving when it senses an item.

Although, I remember as a kid looking and seeing a pedal on the back side of the counter for the cashier to use, and a switch to turn it on and off.

So I don’t know if it’s controlled by pedal or automatically by sensor.

Also, some checkouts have another conveyor belt on other side of the scanner, that moves them to bagging area. So I don’t know if that one moves all the time or not.

What I always found odd was there seems to be a period when cell phones were allowed in classrooms and now they're looking to ban them again. When I was still in high school, the rules were pretty strict about cell phones (most people had flip phones back then so there was less stuff to do on them). You were only allowed to use them between classes or during your lunch/free period. If you pulled out your phone in class you would be told to put it away or sometimes would have your phone taken away until the end of the class. I think shortly after I graduated high school, the rules around phone use were relaxed but it seems now they're disruptive enough for schools to talk about banning them in classes again. 

Hello there. I have had this lamp for almost a year now. It is a very old circular glass fluorescent light fixture dating back to 1962. The ballast has seemingly been replaced. However it has a very unusual style of bulb. It has a 65w/80w circular lamp with two separate G13 bases instead of a typical G10q base. It is also T12 in width which is very unusual. I’ve never seen this sort of lamp before and I can’t find any information about it. If anyone has any information about this lamp please let me know as it would be very helpful.

Awesome find! I have been looking for one of those for years and years now! theres a few collectors who have examples, but I have never been able to find one sadly

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-76898

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-173575

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-183835

there is sadly not much information out there about them exactly, the earliest examples had Bayonet end caps but most have bipin caps like yours, I was told many many years ago that the coal-board used these tubes in some application or another, but I have nothing to substantiate that, they are in general quite the mysterious tube

the company Bright Light Lamps or Long Lamps (not sure if they where 1 and the same or 2 separate companies) specialised in making custom/weird fluorescent tubes

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-204487

they also made another famous but just as mysterious "W" tube

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-137103

Hopefully with more parents that know of the perils of giving young kids unsupervised access to tablets, phones and the internet at a young age this will be true.

Same! Additionally, it should be illegal to allow electronics in schools under federal law. 

So do I understand correctly the capacitor stays effective in series with the fixture when the switch is off?
Then it must go, mainly when there is no PFC capacitor in the fixture. The thing is, the resulting current would cause permanent glow discharge in the starter, wearing it off prematurely.

If you want to somehow "protect the switch from inductive kicks", you need to use two capacitors: One from the line input side of the switch to the Neutral and a second one from that Neutral connection to the load side of the switch. For any fast transients or RF from the contact perspective, these will effectively becoma like in series. But with the switch off, they won't pass any power to the load side.

But I doubt the 170..220mA would be of any problem for the switch at all.
On the contrary, the huge spike currents when the dapacitor gets sharp discharged into the switch just turning ON may actually cause more wear to the contacts than the arc at switch off.