so i have a house i built, by hand, not prefab. i place a med gen outside. i place a switch on the outside wall. hook up wire. i select switch and move it up to my 2nd story level. i place it on a wall when it turns green. next i place a power conduit next to switch. connect the 2. select PC and move it along wall to desired green location. place it. i place 2 hanging lite bulbs near PC. sometimes the lights are controlled by the switch, other times the switch does nothing. i am figuring i have a bug here. am i correct?

i am trying to concentrate on settlement development, and getting very frustrated at this power grid problem. i do not understand why i can place a wall mounted switch and put a ceiling fan up and it is powered?? why? i thought switches did not have a power radius like conduits and power posts.

another thing. i have my shops on the ground floor and crafting stations on the 2nd floor. i want the grnd floor lights constantly on and the 2nd story lights on a switch located next to my bed. it seems my grnd floor PC's are powering lights on the 2nd lvl?

here are some pics to help visualize.

here is my power supply..... http://s20.postimg.org/tlz8wfmkd/Power.jpg

here is the store room with a hanging light. supposedly powered by PC outside on foundation..... http://s20.postimg.org/afm1t962l/Stores_Room.jpg

this is the crafting room 2nd lvl. you can see the switch is off, yet the lights are on? http://s20.postimg.org/qgen683y5/Craft_Room.jpg

Switches are tricky. Sometimes they work, sometimes not.

I just build generators and connectors. Switches are far too much trouble anymore.

Switches are kind of weird. They don't work through the wires. They have an area effect. They have to be connected to the wire, but they don't work in the sense that everything downstream of the switch is controlled by them. They control an area of (I believe) 2x2x2 wall/floor units. The switched power pylons will shut off power to an entire building though as far as I know.

I've never used a switch. I just build a couple of large power conduits (the tower kind) on the roof of my buildings, so I don't have to worry about indoor cables, and then connect them to my generators.

Think of the area of effect of connectors and switches as a globe. My Sanctuary house has three light switches, one at either end where the power lines come to the house, and one in the middle, connected to a terminal, to turn them all on or off. The best thing to do is to experiment.

However, I think you are better putting the PC's in the place where they are meant to go, rather than putting them next to a switch or other pc, and then moving them to where you want them...I've found that has a lot less trouble. The same applies to lights, fiddling round with them sometimes causes them not to work, so best to put them where you want them first up.

Umm, no, that isn't how a switch works at all, not a normal simple switch, anyway.

OP, if you want the lights to be controlled by a manual switch, you'll need to have power run to the switch but not have it near the power conduit. You'll connect the conduit to the switch so that you have Power -> Switch -> Conduit. If the switch is turned "Off" it will be red (and it says "Off" on the switch... or "On" when it is on of course). If the switch is "Off" and it is a good distance away from the power conduit, it will control power to the conduit. As long as the conduit has no power, it cannot distribute power to anything within its range. You want conduits near what they power (lights in this case, based on what you posted). You don't want them near switches or other stuff they don't need to power.

I have never had a switch effect an entire area. My switches, simple manual switches, are used to control power to the radio relay or siren, for example, and those items turn on or off only if the switch is turned on or off to allow power to the item (or stop power to it).

The trick with switches is to follow the flow of power as though it was a river or flow of water. Source to Sink, Power to Powered Object. The switch goes in the middle, preferably near the power source, so that it can manually turn the Source on or off (like a dam allowing water through or not).

Not just visualized, but actually shows the problem.

I was going to link to an explanation I just did about power, but I can't find it, so I'll re-type it.

Power does not get applied by wire. Instead, it's applied as a grid, and this is important to understand.

If you look at the first picture, you'll see you ran your wire from the PS to the PC, and that's where the power is applied as a grid.

In short, you just powered the wall the PC is on, the walls left and right, one block down and one block up.

By placing the switch on the other side basically does nothing to the grid, but only the PCs attached to.

Running power inside a building is tricky with a PS on the outside, because you want your switch on the inside. To do this, you need to build your "power wall" first.

Step 1: take everything down.

Step 2: In the center of the wall in the first picture, place BOTH a switch and PC next to each other in the CENTER of wall.

Step 3: Attach a wire from the PS to the switch FIRST! Then, attach a wire from the switch to the PC.

Step 4: "Grab" the wall the switch and PC are now attached. Flip it around. This will now move the components to the inside of the house.

Step 5: Go into the house and move ONLY the PC! Do NOT move the switch! Doing so will negate the wire from the PS and you'll have to start all over. Once you have the PC set where you want, connect wires and lights as needed.

Step 6: Test out the switch. Since you now have everything connected directly to the switch, everything should turn on/off as expected. If not, check to make sure you don't have overlapping conduits!

Remember, power is applied as a grid, not a wire, so you may need to adjust conduits to move the grids around.

Hope this helps.

Settlements in general is very buggy.

Regarding lights...

I had an issue where lights were working fine in a settlement, then all of the sudden one time I visited the settlements all the lights were off. I checked around and everything seemed to be in order. The generator was still on, all conduits were connected properly, the switch was on... yet no lights.

I finally figured out that if I stored the light in the workshop and placed them on the ceiling / wall, they would turn on again. I had to do that for each an every light; at least 25 lights.

My bad then. I've used them quite a bit and that's the conclusion that I've always drawn. Maybe it's a bug on my end, because my switches shut off lights that aren't wired in line with them.