# The Tale of the Flickering Monitors, part 2: You're (not) Grounded! *This is a followup to my previous post:* [*The Tale of the Flickering Monitors*](https://ariabramowitz.me/the-tale-of-the-flickering-monitors)*. To recap, my monitors were blinking in strange and disruptive ways. The culprit turned out to be my treadmill, and spraying some water on it made the flickering stop. If that sounds like a head scratcher, welcome to my world.* After last week’s wild and crazy monitor adventures, I thought I would be done writing about computer screens and instead focus on what I generally try to use those screens for: work. But there were still some loose ends to tie up. Spraying the treadmill cut down the flickering, but it was only a temporary fix. Once the water dried, the flicker returned and I had to spray again. Not terrible, but not ideal. Also, I wasn’t wearing shoes and all of this spraying was making my socks wet, which is never a good thing. At this point I knew the problem had to do with static electricity buildup. I figured the socks weren’t helping with that, so I tried putting my sneakers on. The flickering seemed to stop. That was good, but could I do better? I searched around a bit more and discovered a whole community of people with similar treadmill-caused monitor flickering issues. Among them, this guy (flickering at 5:30): %[https://youtu.be/-lTdZFEQPn8?t=223] I wasn’t going to start playing around with wires the way he did (again, I’m a software guy). And the static discharge bands didn’t look like they would be any better than my current sneaker solution. But Mr. ElectroBOOM’s talk about *electrical grounding* — basically, giving stray electricity a safe place to go — got me thinking. There was something about my treadmill’s power cord that I had noticed a long time ago and then promptly ignored: the plug was not a standard Israeli plug (I live in Israel). To compare, below is a picture of standard 2- and 3- pronged Israeli plugs, next to the thing I found attached to my treadmill: ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1756141087631/11b044d8-46ff-4a7f-a131-c9c159c0d3e2.jpeg align="center") It was unusual, but I plugged it in and, hey, it worked. I hardly gave it a second thought. Until now. I knew that the third prong on a 3-prong plug is usually meant for grounding, but this plug didn’t have a third prong. It just had a metal strip going down the middle. Maybe that was the problem. I fed a picture of it to chatgpt. This time, it gave me some darned good information: > Ah — this is actually a **Schuko plug (Type F, common in Europe).** > > It’s not just a “2-prong” plug. The two round pins are live and neutral, and the **metal strips on the top and bottom edges** (you can see them on your photo) are the ground contacts. When you plug it into a proper Schuko socket, those strips touch the grounded clips in the socket and provide a full earth ground. > > So your treadmill *does* support grounding — it’s just that the ground is on the **side rails**, not a third pin sticking out. Again, for comparison, below is a standard Israeli outlet (left) and a Shuko outlet (right): ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1756141893223/d6cde4e6-1444-4612-834b-ad8ba775b5cd.png align="center") The Shuko plug fit in the Israeli outlet. It was able to power the treadmill, just the grounding mechanism didn't have anything to attach to. I thought I might be on to something. I went back to Google and discovered the nifty product pictured below: a Shuko to Israeli plug adapter. I ordered one. ![](https://superpharmstorage.blob.core.windows.net/hybris/products/desktop/medium/1238638611612.jpg align="left") *Shuko to Israeli plug adapters (*[*https://shop.super-pharm.co.il/electricity-and-electronics/cables-and-adapters/electric-cables/מתאם-חשמל-מתקע-גרמני-(Schuko)-לשקע-ישראלי-כולל-הארקה-3-פינים-עד-16A-קבוע/p/mp-00106831*](https://shop.super-pharm.co.il/electricity-and-electronics/cables-and-adapters/electric-cables/%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%90%D7%9D-%D7%97%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A2-%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%99-\(Schuko\)-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%A7%D7%A2-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99-%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%A7%D7%94-3-%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A2%D7%93-16A-%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A2/p/mp-00106831)*)* The adapter arrived a few days later. As a test, I turned on the treadmill one more time without the adapter. It was still flickering. So I attached the adapter, held my breath, and… it kept flickering. Oh well. At least I had the sneaker solution. It beat the spray bottle, and I got to learn a bit more about plugs and outlets along the way. --- ***P.S.*** While doing all of this, I decided to give my homemade docking station stand ([mentioned in my last post](https://ariabramowitz.me/the-tale-of-the-flickering-monitors)) a slight upgrade so it looks a bit less like what it is: a piece of garbage. We’ll call this version 2.1: ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1756201015789/dcae46cf-af10-45db-9793-a6b2f8453754.jpeg align="center")