CFLs flicker when Wall Swtich WS467 is OFF

The WS467 is a 2 wire device that requires continuous current flow to operate. It normally gets this through the cold filament of an incandescant lamp. Put a small incandescant lamp in parallel with the CFL and the CFL will stop flickering. I'm currently using a 15 watt lamp but I plan to try a 4 watt night light.

Thanks, John. I'll give that a try. But the kids might still balk at a night light in their room - they're way beyond that now. :-)

However that will be fine for the porch lights.

Jim

Yup, disable the current sensing (local control) and the lights will stop flickering. Been there done that! :-)

Not quite! The WS467 is only a two-wire device. To disable the current which causes the CFL flickering would remove power from the WS467 circuitry and prevent it from being turned on remotely. (The WS467 does not have "local sensing" as the term is generally understood for plug-in lamp modules.)

The OP needs to replace the WS467 with a wall switch designed for fluorescent lamps. Note that these all require having a neutral wire in the switchbox, and generally operate with a relay, so there will be an audible click when they're turned on or off.

Yes, another poster (or maybe you earlier) already discussed the two-wire aspect. No power, no workie.

For some of the switches I can easily try the trick of a low wattage incandescent bulb in parallel. For the others, the fixture has two bulbs - for now I'll just try one bulb of each type. Less than half the energy savings, but better than none.

I can disable the local dimming feature (which I had to mod te enable) and can train the kids to NOT dim via the remote [or take away the palm remote and only let them use the stick-a-switch without dimming control]. They can hear the wall switch start to buzz (better than I can!) when the dimming happens so I think they'll stay on top of that.

So, unless we get some spurious dimming, and the wall switches stay on at

100% level, I'm thinking this will be OK. If you know another reason why it wouldn't be OK, please let me know. While I'd rather not buy new switches, I'd much more rather not have to buy a new house or get new kids.

Thanks again.

Jim

The N:Visions are the best of the CFL's I've tried so far, but with single fixture overhead lights governed by a WS467, I get some pretty awful results. TGD in the X-10 support forum recently suggested a "fix" here that involves inserting resistors into light fixtures:

but a knowledgeable person I asked had profound reservations about such a "fix" or more exactly the resistor ratings given as examples. It would be

*very* nice to maintain local sense and eliminate the flashing problems, but it seems as if it's one or the other. I'm in the midst of a complete rewire of my house, bringing neutrals to places where I really want to use a CFL bulb but can't because of the havoc it causes X-10. It's a real bitch and in many cases I am just running a new cable to a new fixture from the basement up. I want the option for tungsten in the real cold weather and dual fixtures would allow that. Not sure of the SAF, but I'll find out. The light switch wires that came with the house go from the basement to the attic and then fan out and drop down. Not an easy task to add a neutral wire.

It's too bad they haven't designed a CFL that simulates a tungsten bulb's electrical properties more closely. I just bought a brand new batch of bulbs of various wattages from HD. I've found the electronics in CFL's varies from brand to brand and from batch to batch and I wouldn't be surprised if someday they produce a bulb that's completely X-10 compatible. And affordable. (-: So, let me save this message and try out the new bulbs on my overhead lights.

(much "screwing" around . . .)

OK, I'm back. I tried the brand new N:vision SKU 772-20 Model ES42 42W V42836 (I hope that last number's not a firmware version number!) in the hopes that the larger wattage and the more recent vintage would help and it flickered. I thought that the 13W load of the 60W "equivalent" bulb caused problems because it was below the 25W threshold X-10 recommends for lamp loads. There was no difference between the two. I took a camera and made a swipe image at 1 second and counted 6 images of the bulb, so I believe it's

6 flashes per second. (-:

triple-checked, the wall

I think the module's electronics are not working and probably couldn't dim, even if you wanted to dim them. At least mine don't. Unlike your lights, there's no option to put in a smaller bulb to carry the trickle in my overheads. But in thinking about it more, running a big CFL at the ceiling, base up isn't a good idea, even though my lamp shade allows good air cooling. Virtually every very premature failure I've had (20+ and counting) with CFL bulbs has been in a base-up configuration. I need to find some torchiere lamps specifically designed for large CFL's so the bulb head doesn't sit above the lamp rim. Then I can use RF switches and perhaps even preserve local control.

Anyone having this problem with N:Vision CFL's should report it to their tech support hotline at 1-800-378-6998. They can't find a solution for the problem if they don't know it exists or how many people it affects. My three biggest gripes are:

1) The bulbs don't shut off completely and flicker about once a second, sometimes for hours. I know from the new HE shoplight that I bought that this causes premature aging. Only one bulb of the 2 strip 48" fixture flashed, and that's the one that six months later has large dark spots at the end of the bulb. 2) The lamps "relight" themselves, which I believe is an extension of number one, but in this case, the trickle current doesn't just cause a flash, it makes the module think the light switch has been "jiggled." 3) The problem you're having of the bulb flashing wildly in a fixture that doesn't have a direct connection to a neutral wire.

I'd like dimming to be seamless, too, but I can live without it if I can get some relief on one through three!

It may be that with some circuit redesign they can eliminate or ameliorate some of the problems. What I find most troublesome are lamps that test fine when I first got them but as they age, begin emitting noise strong enough to step on the X-10 signal.

-- Bobby G.

I'll think about calling the hotline - unless it means an endless navigation and then wait through phone menus. But you're right - they can't address an issue if they don't know about it.

I am not currently experiencing any no flicker or re-lighting - except as I already desribed with the ws467. As for the fix, it is in a way similar to the other patch of putting a small wattage bulb in parallel. But somehow I also have a funny feeling about the resistor. Like I said, my current plan is to use one of each type bulb since the fixture holds two bulbs.

Not dimming is not an issue. I rarely use diming for mood or ambience, but rather for energy savings. With CFLs, we're already there*! *We hope...

I'm most concerned about the premature failure when installed base-up. The biggest (energy) savings I hope to realize is using the flood CFLs in our kitchen recessed lighting - thse are ALL base up. Normally 300 watts incandescent for a good half of the day. I calculate that it will only take about 5-6 months to pay for the CFL bulbs with the energy savings. If they fail prematurely because they are base-up, then what savings do I have???

Also, my overhead lights are in an enclosed fixture. Will I also see premature failure in htis installation? It is hard for me to detemine if there will really be any savings as I don't know how long these lights are on each day - certinaly no more than an hour or two.

As for premature failures - do you have much luck in getting reimbursed by either HD or N:Vision when they fail early? The package LOUDLY claims that they will last 7 years... If I don't get at least a year, then I don't think it's worth the effort/risk (mercury disposal).

And the increased noise with age is also troubling. I thought life was good when I got several CFLs in and X-10 still works OK (for other lights). But if my X-10 is going to get swamped over time, them I have lost. Do you also see this with the N:Vision CFLSs?

Thank you.

Jim

Exactly. I'll see if I can find you shortcut through the menus - there's actually a website that maintains a database of 800 numbers and what keys you can press to hasten your connecting to an actual human operator. In any even, I think it's important that bulb makers get good feedback from users. CFLs have improved dramatically in the last 5 years or so. My first big batch of GE's were outrageous signal suckers. Now, the problem is "relighting" and noise and not so much signal sucking.

That's an OK solution. I adopted the same with a string of basement lights. The one right over the stairwell is tungsten because I don't want to miss a step because a bulb didn't warm up fast enough. Our basement gets pretty cold in winter, especially when we "zone it off." Slow warm is a real problem there as well as in outbuildings and attached, unheated garages.

That's one of those devilish tradeoffs. CFLs don't dim well and people who ran their tungsten lights dimmed are probably not happy about it. I don't dim lights much, but I like having the ability to do it. When there's snowcover, I dim the outside lights nearly 50% and the highly reflective snow picks up the slack. (-: The outside lights are all "neutral free" and are incompatible with CFLs. Not only will they not dim, they flicker like strobelights. )-:

Clearly, premature failure is going to eat into your saving, particularly if you can't get reasonable warranty replacements. My suggestion is to mark all the bulbs going into the can fixtures with a Sharpie so you can tell how long they last. My large Lights of America failed very quickly in a base up configuration. It's obvious because there's no discoloration of the plastic or dark spots at the end of the spiral tubes, and that occurs with most bulbs after just a few hundred hours of 'on' time.

Since I am temperature obsessed, I would probably stick the wired probe from one of my remote thermometer inside the can to monitor actual operating temperatures. There may be ways to improve the air circulation around the fixtures. It may also be that you can replace the fixtures with ones that are CFL friendly: larger, roomier and with better ventilation. I have noticed that most of my new light fixtures have much more room around the lamp sockets to accommodate the much-larger-than-tungsten CFL lamp bases. The failures I had were in older style reflector lamps that accommodated large CFL bulbs, but didn't provide a whole lot of space around the electronics "bay" of the CFL bulb.

The best advice I can give you is to do what I do. Mark the bulbs with incept dates and keep a spreadsheet or database of their location, approximate use, etc. Among the improvements I've seen in CFL's is an increased resistance to temperature-related problems. It could be with the right bulbs you'll experience the long life touted on the packages.

I have kept all my packaging and receipts, but have not sent or returned any bulbs in a long time since I wanted to keep the bulbs for failure analysis and eventual recycling. Now that I have cut enough apart to satisfy my curiosity, I may indeed do a big test mailing and send back all the failed bulbs to their makers so I can report back who's naughty and who's nice. The problem, for me at least, is that it makes little economic sense to return single bulbs, one-at-a-time to the vendor or manufacturer. But now I have two whole boxes of dead bulbs I'd like to turn in, as long as I get enough back to cover the postage and time spent returning them.

My main gripes with N:Vision consist mostly of the flashing of the lights after they've been turned out by X-10. We use a lot of floor lamps so killing local sense isn't what I want to do. The problem with lights that "after flash" is they burn out prematurely and dim considerably before reaching end-of-life. In certain areas, my wife refuses to use them because of the ever increasing warm up times required and their impact on safety.

The N:Vision bulbs represent a substantial leap in usability and reliability, particularly in an X-10 environment and I am thankful that a fellow CHA'er pointed them out to me. But they're still a long way from being the functional equivalent of an incandescent bulb. I suspect because of the basic design, they'll never reach parity with tungsten bulbs in areas like watts per cubic inch of lightbulb, steady light output throughout the entire life cycle, resistance to high temperatures and ecological safety. They'll probably eliminate the need for having a neutral at each switch box on the same day I complete my house rewiring to provide neutrals to each switch. )-:

-- Bobby G.

I did mark them all! We'll just have to hpe for reasonable warranty replacements (do they ALL require you to send in the bad bulb? That lmost defeats the entire purpose since I could almost buy a new one for the same price. Oh, good marketing ploy!) And my recessed lighting cans are just that - complete, empty cans with a socket in the middle at the top. So they will have lots of room around the electronics part of the bulb. I only now realized this when talking to a friend who told me that he couldn't get his CFL flood lights to fit into his precisely because there is no such room. So maybe I'll be OK here.

Yeah, I keep stuff like that, too. Too much the engineer -"now why did that fail the way it did???"

Yeah, the more I study this, the more I agree with you. It will likely not be possible to make a fully plug-compatible replaclement CFL for a tungsten. We just gotta figure out what featuers are imptorant and find the ones that meet those requirements.

I'll try to call N:Vision and give them the feedback.

Oh, isn't that the truth!

Jim

particularly

If my experience with cooling ever-hotter generations of CPU generalizes to CFL cooing, there has to be a pretty good and unimpeded airflow to keep the temperatures down. A very big fixture could still overheat if there's no exit at the top for the hot air. Lots of recessed lighting elements were designed to tolerate high heat rather than dissipate it. That's not what CFL's need.

I'd do a test run. If, after six months, if I had premature failures or very slow starting or serious darkening I would measure the temperature at the top of the cans to see if I could bring it down a bit. It's important to compare a new bulb to the existing ones at this point because the darkening is hard to notice without a new bulb to make the comparison. If I found problems, in the worst case scenario I'd put a 12VDC cooling fan at the point with the highest temperature and see if I could vent the output to a cooler area. However, you should be able to generate enough airflow by convection that you won't need a fan.

After my first Lights of America (made in China!) CFL bulbs failed I realized that the longevity was not going to match the package claims, so I began keeping records, receipts, saved bulbs and an ever-lengthening list of "not quite plug compatible" discrepancies, the worst of which is "won't work without a neutral at the switch with X-10."

It's a reminder that this great country was built on a spirit of compromise. Every day I've got to compromise something, somewhere! It's time to compromise and buy another batch of plug-in X-10 filters.

Good idea. X-10 users are probably not big on their list but I'll bet with a little wheel squeaking we can move up.

Well, the project's going slowly enough to give them time to figure it out. There's no end of fun running romex through old wood, brick, plaster and lathe.

-- Bobby G.

One CFL in parallel with 160 watts of incandescents worked fine with my X10 dimmer until the dimmer burnt out after about 3 weeks.

Another note: CFLs do not dim. Some are rated to be used on dimmers (safe) but they cannot dim. I have tried a few brands now.

The assertion that "CFLs do not dim" is at best misleading.

There are in fact *many* CFLs that are _designed_ to be dimmed just as there are CFLs that are _not_ so designed.

A google of "dimmable CFL" returns 167,000 hits. The topic of dimmable CFL's has been discussed many times in this newsgroup.

I have four or five different types of dimmable CFLs including, as previously discussed in c.h.a, outdoor-rated, candelabra-base, warm, dimmable n:Vision CFLs from Home Depot -- the largest home improvement store chain in the US. These CFLs and others dim jist fine in my experience and for my purposes.

HTH ... Marc

Visit my ongoing Home Automation and Electronics Internet Porch Sale at

Marc_F_Hult

Hmm. I checked X10 site (just for giggles) and here is what they say about that:

"Also, this [fluorescent light] ballast is an inductive load. Controlling such a load could permanently damage the Wall Switch Module."

I guess you are right - that triac circuit just isn't cut out for that type of load.

That means my pay-off time just got extended since I'll have to replace at least 4 WS467 [or just go back to manual swtich]... and I doubt I have a neutral line handy, so add an electrician. Yep, I think the CFLs will save me money in about 20 years. Sigh.

Jim

PS Comment about dimming CFLs deleted as I don't want to dim them.

I have a Sylvania and a GE dimmable CFL and neither one can be dimmed. They do start amazingly fast and without any flicker though. Oh yeah, one works in -30 C in my garage just fine.

Your assertion that dimmable "CFLs do not dim" is patently false.

What model number of "GE dimmable CFL" do you have ? Is it a FLE26HT3 or FLE15HT3 (both "dimmable to 20% of maximum light output")

What model Sylvania? Is it a Dulux® EL 15 watt BR30 (dimmable to 10% of full light output") ?

If the CFLs you have are described and sold as dimmable CFLs by those manufacturers, then either your dimmer, or the particular CFLs you have, or both are defective.

... Marc

Visit my ongoing Home Automation and Electronics Internet Porch Sale at

Marc_F_Hult ECOntrol.org

Do you have any idea how a CFL and a dimmer works?

From some research I have discovered that

1) Dimmable CFLs have only started to be produced in 2007 ...maine are older than that. 2) Dimmable CFL bulbs have a very limited range of dimming 3) It takes a special dimmer to make them work. Most reports tell us that they do not dim with many dimmers.

Do you have any idea how obviously unrelated the question of what my expertise may be is to your unhelpful, un-informed, clownish assertion that 'dimmable CFLs don't dim' ?

(FWIW, I have designed, built, tested and used AC lighting dimmers for use in my home using analog (ramp + comparator) and microcontroller phase-control techniques (AVR and 8051-based) using discrete SCR and modular (SSR; solid-state relay) output stages with analog (0-10vdc), direct mechanical, and digital (DMX512 / DMX-512) controls.

And I have quantitatively measured, under controlled circumstances, the actual dimming of incident light from actual 'dimmable' CFLs using those dimmers.

Among other related experiences.)

... Marc

Visit my ongoing Home Automation and Electronics Internet Porch Sale at

Marc_F_Hult

Utter nonsense. Whoever " "John J. Bengii" actually is was duped by his naive googling and the self-promoting PR from yet another entrant into the crowded dimmable CFL arena.

Like many other folks, I've had -- and dimmed! -- 'dimmable' CFLs for years.

Visit

'research' just the 63 different ENERGY STAR qualified dimmable CFLS that are available. Many have been available for years or supercede previous versions.

Using the search tools at the site, one can learn that there were at least three different manufacturers of ENERGY STAR qualified dimmable CFLs by 2002.

Whoever posts as " "John J. Bengii" has demonstrated that s/he doesn't know a dimmable CFL from a dim bulb.

Many are dimmable in a 10:1 ratio of Full:Dimmed actual light output. How is that "very limited"? It is equivalent to unscrewing 9 out of 10 light bulbs in a multi-lamp candelabra.

Wrong. It does not "take[s] a special dimmer to make them work". Apparently whoever posts as " "John J. Bengii" thinks that there is a single technology that just arrived in 2007!

But one touted claim of that technology is that it works with the conventional manual and electronically controlled, TRIAC-based, phase-control AC dimming technology that has been prevalent for the past 30 years. As have many other dimmable CFLs for years.

... Marc

Visit my ongoing Home Automation and Electronics Internet Porch Sale at

Marc_F_Hult