On Wednesday, June 26, 2013 9:32:59 AM UTC-4, dpb wrote:
On 6/25/2013 3:26 AM, nestork wrote:

...



3. Now, just turn EITHER one of the two three way switches on the end

upside down. That way, when it's toggle is in the down position, the

light will be off, and flipping the toggle of ANY other switch will turn

the light ON.



...



set up all your switches so that the power goes through all the top

terminals when the toggles of the two three way switches are up, and

through all the bottom terminals when the toggles of the two three way

switches are down (and you may have to turn some 4 way switches upside

down to ensure they're all oriented the same). In that situation, with

the toggles of both 3 way switches on the end in the down position, the

light will be ON. By turning either three way switch upside down,

having the toggle in the down position will interrupt voltage getting to

the lamp, so that with one three way switch upside down, ALL toggles in

the down position means the light is OFF, and flipping ANY switch turns

the light ON.



Hope this helps.

...



It doesn't, really...



You also have to add the condition that he also never uses the other

switches than the particular panel location in question to control the

light as would be normally done--for example, use one near an entry door

to turn on as entering and another near the exit door to turn off as

leaving. As soon as that is done, he's now got a case where one's up

and one's down and the light's off again. As the pattern ensues of

more-or-less random movement between locations, the states again become

also, more or less random as to which is up and which is down when the

light is off.



It's just not possible to have it wired conventionally no matter what

the initial configuration is w/o adding very heavy constraints on usage

and retain the possibility that turning any one switch in the down

position turns off an on light--the one closest by at the time may

already be 'down'.




I'm amazed at how many people proceed with the "how to"
without understanding that they are tilting at windmills.
The most you can get with any of these rewiring attempts
is to get one defined position. If, for example you want
that one position to be that the light is off with all
switches in a down position, you can do that. Cool. But
just take out a piece of paper and make a table. With
4 switches, there are 16 possible combination of switch
position. List all 16 together with if the light is on
or off. With the rewiring or rotating of the switches,
you get ONE of those table entries to be all switches down,
light off. But that's all you get. There are other
table entries with the light off and the switches in
various states.

As I said previously, I can see achieving that to be of
some small value. For example, if you're leaving the
house for vacation and you want to look at each switchplate
in the house prior to leaving, if they are all down, then
all the lights are off. But you can't determine squat from
looking at one switch. And almost all of us would just look
at the light.