Found this plastic thing on top of the box outside where my phone line connects to the house system. The row of holes on the rear look to have electrical contact points of some sort inside, like a female plug. Any ideas?
That’s a pluggable DIN terminal strip.
You attach the wires with it disconnected from your device, and the plug the whole assembly into the making connector.
ETA: this gives you the general idea.
Arrgh!.
Mating.
What kind of device would that be? I just can’t figure out how it got there. Maybe the Verizon guy left it there a couple of months ago when he serviced my FiOS.
It could be almost anything.
The wire size looks like it might be big enough for power, so maybe it’s how they connect AC to their power supply boards (although there are a lot of terminals, and AC only requires 3). It’s also possible that it’s from a traffic light controller, or maybe it just fell out of a repairman’s toolbox.
This. Its used for mains power so as to avoid using domestic power boards…
fits into a smaller space.
The same guy can fix up the central box that supplies the whole area…