I've been back and forth on LC ratios and damping. After countless simulation runs and many hours of testing actual hardware, what is in there now seems to provide the best tradeoff.
I used that technique to blank impulse noise back in my ham days, but that would not help here. The waveform I captured this morning showed beating CF noise almost mimicking X10 data.
The PIC was added to the original XTB design to just gate off the superfluous 3-phase bursts so transmitted energy is concentrated in the essential zero crossing burst. Once the PIC was on board I decided to include TW523 emulation for little additional cost. Then I added complete error detection, the ability to receive sequential dims, extended messages, and now AGC. Lurking in the future may be even a repeater capability built into the XTB-II. This is WAY past what the hardware was originally designed to do.
Since most X10 transmitters cannot develop the signal levels produced by the XTB, I made the receive channel as sensitive as possible. Unfortunately, that gets it down into the noise level. The simple solution is to just stick thumbs in its ears and ignore low-level signals. AGC gives it the ability to recognize low-level signals in a low noise environment while still allowing it to function well in a high noise environment. Unfortunately, there will always be noise sources that can cause errors.
That seems like a reasonable analysis. I suspect the standard manufacturing mantra of "how can we make it a little bit cheaper" is coming into play.
Reducing costs by using cheaper materials (and often less of them) coupled with "innovative" ways of assembling them results in parts that often have correspondingly higher and higher failure rates until market feedback forces the manufacturer to backpedal a little. A glass envelope a few microns thinner doesn't seem to be a big change, but as you well know from your industrial days, even very fractional costs add up when you're making 10's of thousands of something. I've had a number of bulbs that have cracked at the base recently so I assume something's been "economized" in the manufacturing process.
Of course, there are always plain old manufacturing defects, which I expect to be rising as fewer workers are expected to do more and more as companies strive to satisfy investors first and customers last.
Even if a CFL has a good warranty, there's a cost associated with having a manufacturer make good on it. A defective incandescent bulb costs a quarter and goes into the trash if it fails. A defective CFL that has to be returned involves postage costs, time costs, etc. Usually it means the bulb gets dumped because it costs just as much to screw around with warranty replacement as it does to go out and buy a new one. As you pointed out earlier, X-10 users of CFL's have to factor in the cost of filters so the equations have lots of hidden inputs.
The most serious defect in relatively simplistic equations like Wikipedia's for predicting bulb costs is neglecting the spill heat produced by incandescents and the effect that has on heating and cooling bills. In many cases, it could be a wash, but that's not guaranteed, especially in my case where I use more CFL's in the summer than the winter. We're more willing to deal with the problems of CFL's in the summer where they keep the house cooler and the electrical bill down during peak rate hours.
In addition, it's hard to put a dollar value on things like:
the nuisance of slow warm ups, shifting color temperatures, inability to work properly outdoors in very cold weather, buzzing, flickering, interference with HA devices, bulbs too big to fit in standard reflectors, bulbs that extend beyond standard reflectors
and some of the other issues involved with replacing incandescent bulbs with CFL. They all factor into the decision of whether to use a CFL bulb or a incandescent. So does something as simple as how many times a day a bulb is cycled. We still use incandescents in places like the bathroom where lights can be turned on and off 20 or more times a day. CFL's positively wither under such usage while long-life bulbs seem to take it in stride.
Insteon users will also need filters with noisy CFLs.
And there are opportunity costs. LED lights are improving and becoming competively priced with CFLs. Sandia Labs has a method of converting more of the heat from an incandescent into visible light, greatly improving the efficiency. People who've invested $$$ in CFLs may regret it when something more economical (and less polluting) comes along, not to mention the possibility of "free, clean and constant energy."
Of course, we all know that the DOE programs to encourage (and subsidize) CFL development don't cost anything. ;) Well, maybe Ph. Ds who've spent their life in government funded programs don't realize that but the less exalted do.
Oh, and the cost of returning a warrantied CFL is likely to approach or exceed the purchase price even using the mail with free pick-up. If you choose to just dispose of it, it constitutes hazardous waste.
That is why I tentatively decided to go with Z-Wave
Damn I home so. The initial owner/builder of this house had a recessed light fetish...42 of them in the house, each with a 65 watt R30 in it. The CFL equivalents work quite well except that they need to warm up for about
15 seconds to reach full brightness. Thats not a good idea in the kitchen. LED based bulbs are not quite up to that level of lumens and format yet, and may not be for some time. For now I am faced with using CFLs, larger power bill, or retrofitting surface mounted long tube floursecents. Given the WAF, I think its the wallet issue for now.
Prop 87 in CA is more of the same for reaseach money. So. Cal Edison is really pushing CFL, giving them away/exchanging bulb for bulb.
I had missed that part of CFLs until recently. Local trash company does not seem to care.
Our story is that we bought (vice built) our new house. Could not pass on the the $200K price savings. I had planned a hardwired HA installation to rival Bruce. However, I am now faced with retrofitting a large single story house on a slab with a hip roof. It has no security or network wiring, only 6 RG-6 drops, no provision for the cable modem/router, and the phone wiring is daisy chained. This in a 6 month old home high end home!
802.11n, Elk, and Zwave and here I come. Going to open the walls in the finished garage to mount the cans and get some wiring into the attic.
Depending on how your house is wired, you might be able to isolate the CFLs on their own circuits with minimal filters. If I understand what he's saying, that's what Jeff Volp has done. It does mean you cannot automate the CFLs using PLC methods but can use PLC on all the other circuits.
I'm not a fan of Z-Wave so haven't thought through how they might work in this scenario - dimmers may still have problems with the CFL noise but relays are probably OK. Despite its being around much longer than UPB or Insteon, there have been very few (aside from dealers and one nincompoop who apparently is unaware that we signed an extradition treaty with Brazil in the '60s) who have posted here in favor of Z-Wave. I'm sure there are people who will want to hear about your project as it progresses.
Given that Steorm is an Irish company, I worry that their process may involve leprechauns and fairies but, since for all we know, 96% of the universe could be strawberry jam, I'm willing to wait and see. ;)
On your CFLs, the PDF from PG&E which I cited earlier has a pretty good list of CFL Dos & Don'ts.
My first (and last) CFL was from a similar program from ConEd (Chicago) more than 20 years ago. It died in a matter of weeks so I've been more leary (and less green except around the gills) since.
Hmmm, I wonder what So. Cal Edison does with the incandescents they trade for?
The greenies are just starting to get organized on this so I'm sure that will change. It's more of an issue with commercial buildings which may have lots of CFLs than with a single family residence.
I have not heard anyone blasting it either. Have to see how it works. Going to start small and move things around the house to see how well they work. It also has the widest assortment of parts tright now as well. We are going to EFX in a few weeks to verify WAF for the control panels. I've done X-10 in a prior home and it has made me cautiious about PLC, espcially with CFL. Had we built we were going with Centralite and Omni.
Is ETX the show in Long Beach? Long, long ago I lived about 6-7 blocks down the beach from the Convention Center. I believe Bruce Robin plans to attend.
Were I building I'd look hard at Square D's C-Bus line. They have a proven line of RS485 and wireless devices.
You may not have been looking in the right places. Some of the other HA forums that have sprung up in the past few years have a lot of negative posts - most related to the weaknesses I pointed out here when it was first introduced.
We use CFs in almost all our ceiling cans. Each switch controls a string of up to 5 of them. One small Leviton 6287 noise block is installed between the X10 switch and the lighting string to isolate all CFs on that circuit. It fit behind the X10 switches in each of those electrical boxes. The 5 amp rating means those circuits will also handle normal incandescent lights. The Ocelot has access to all of these lights.
We do have one circuit isolated by the large 20A XPF filter. That circuit is on the non X10 phase, and feeds most electronic devices, computers, etc. It was intended as an emergency power circuit, but also serves to isolate all potential signal suckers from other household circuits. We also have a couple of "private" X10 devices on that circuit that are locally controlled.
On really bad polluters such as the printer/scanner in the lab I often use ferrite toroids. I leave the wire a bit longer and run it a few times through the core. That takes care of hardcore RF noise. Of course one has to mind the max current and limit the number of turns in order not to saturate the core. Also, cores are conductive, they must be isolated and mounted so they can never touch live mains contacts.
That's how I was going to suggest wiring it up. :)
I assume you are using X10-compatible switches WITH a neutral? (As opposed to the typical X10-brand with no neutral, which must pass PLC thru the device under control.)
Wow, must have DEEP boxes. :)
I'm in process of trying to track down and exterminate a nasty X10 PLC gremlin. Tracking noise sources, adding filters, adding signal suckers... Painful doesn't begin to describe it... But someday I hope to automate CFLs again, and my boxes are not nearly deep enough for a filter, much less two or three. :(
( Something changed about 18 months ago (no, I don't work fast ;) and pretty much stopped all the X10 PLC on my property. Prior to that I had no problem with phase coupling and signal strength was fine from anywhere in the house or barn (over 400ft away). Now I've got all the plug-in modules working fine, but still the 'installed' stuff isn't working to any degree of predictablity. I'm about to order a leviton
6284 or X10Pro PZZ01 because external cause is nearly all that remains, and this really needs to be working before Christmas this year!)
Yes, they are all the older Leviton "red line" switches (now discontinued).
Yep. All boxes are 3 1/2" deep, and oversize metal boxes are used for all X10 dimmer switches. For the few cents saved per box it didn't make any sense to put in smaller ones. Metal boxes are expensive, but they solve the dimmer heat problem.
It doesn't have to be at the switch. The boxes on our ceiling cans have a lot of room left inside. If you can identify which light fixture is first in the string, you can probably add the filter into its box.
If you have access to a scope, it can be very helpful. The ESM1 is great for its price, but only a scope showed what was really going on with that CF noise. You might also give the XTB a try. Good luck!
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