Random X10 all lights on/all units off over and over

I rest my case. :^)

Neighbors new to X10 trying to control their Xmas display?

No > Ok, this was embarassing. I drove home today to find all the X10

Actually, those patterns look too well defined to be noise. Since another RF command interrupted the sequence, I would look for a X10 RF device screwing up. People have reported that some X10 RF devices will transmit at random as their batteries are dying. However, that would require a transceiver still plugged in somewhere to accept those signals.

Do your close neighbors use X10? If so, do you use a whole-house filter to block their X10 commands from coming in? Do you have a repeater? What other transmitters were still plugged in? You must have had some sort of line interface for Homeseer. Is there any chance the source was there?

That B9 Bright 7 should be pursued. Noise would not produce a solid pattern like that, so something must be transmitting it.

Since it was raining, do you have any motion detectors that might have gotten wet?

If you want reliable X10, you really should invest in a signal measurement tool.

Jeff

Do you have an HCA02-10E coupler/repeater?

How far to the nearest neighbor? X-10 RF range normally is on the order of

Good point. If all X-10 transceivers are off line, then what is reading PLC codes and doing the recording to the Homeseer log? I'd set an appliance or lamp module to one of the "constant noise" codes and see if that module was activated both BEFORE AND AFTER the Homeseer interface was disconnected. That's my guess where this problem lies.

N.B. to the OP, the time has come, my friend, for you to buy an ESM1 or a Monterey. Solving problems like this without a meter are at least 10 times as hard. It's a sad but true fact. Someone used to rent them - not sure if they still do - but they're not so expensive that it's worth chasing your tail for sometimes days at a time tracking down a problem that's so easy to find with the right tools.

-- Bobby G.

Not precisely true. All my Robodogs are set to "A1" and the front lights to "A2" because the lousy keyfobs, if twisted too much, revert to "A." It happened so many times, I decided not to fight it, but to join it. In this RF soup I live in, no neighbor is going to be able to control my RF X-10 because *I* can barely control it from ten feet away!

The Robodogs on A1 have been useful for detecting other stealth controller resets. If the dog barks when I press the first unit button on a StickaSwitch or the ON button on a Hawkeye, I know, without reaching for my Monterey, that the switch has reset.

-- Bobby G.

Think of it as your "engine fault" light - it's not a good thing to ignore. It usually means it's time to buy a meter to figure out where the problems are coming from and how to deal with them. Right now, I'm betting that something's wrong with your Homeseer/PLC link but your constant "B9 Bright

-- Bobby G.

Thanks to all. What a great community. Let me try to answer some of the questions:

I'll try to debug some of the noisy signals with device replacement and more careful analysis of when I get the signals. I got most of this stuff back in the day when X10 dot com was giving the stuff away - remember the $25 off $25 coupons? I made off like a bandit. :) (almost made up for all the pop-unders that followed worth it)

P.S. Coolest thing I've done with X10 - I set up my Harmony remote to send a code to an IR X10 receiver whenever I paused my PVR - it would then send an x10 message to dim up or dim down the lights. So, when I pause my show to go grab a cold one, the lights would dim up, and when I sat back down with my cold one and pressed pause again, the lights would dim back down. Unfortunately, I never got it working too reliably with the Harmony remote, so I abandoned the project. But for a while, it was very cool!