George,
It is renosteinke that is claiming these devices use the ground as a conductor, not me.
I agree that those devices should be using a neutral, not the ground, if they need a current path other than through the switched load. Perhaps renosteinke has found devices that "cheat" and use the ground instead. (In my opinion, such devices should not have a UL listing.) My experience is with electronics that have a neutral connection (cord-connected or hard-wired), so I am not very familiar with the workings of devices such as photocells, timers, etc. that use various "power stealing" methods. I agree that they should not use ground as a current path, but I've also seen enough poorly-made products to believe that there are some out there that do.
