Strange: X-10 outlets & LED Holiday Lights

I have two Leviton 6227W outlets outside my house which have been used for years to operate our holiday lights. Yesterday I put up new lights, those LED holiday lights instead of our usual C7 lights. Everything works fine so far.

When I came home, the outlets have switched off from the timer, and the LED lights continue to glow faintly, maybe 10% of their full brightness. When I unplug the lights, they go out completely. When I plug them back in the relay trips and the come on full, as they're supposed to.

Is still low voltage present to operate the relay, or did I wire these incorrectly?

Reply to
Eric
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You're running into the local control "feature". Even appliance modules and outlets leave a small current running through the load so they can detect the on/off/on switch sequence and power up the load on local demand. That leakage is enough to turn on the LED's at a low level.

At least with some new versions of appliance/lamp modules, I've seen a programming feature where you can disable that local control feature, and hopefully that actually kills the leakage current instead of just telling the module to not pay attention to it. I don't think I've seen that kind of programming feature in an outlet though.

Reply to
Brian W. Antoine

You probably need to use an x10 appliance controller instead of a lamp controller (which I think always passes a small amount of current).

Reply to
Si Ballenger

Jim wrote: I had the exact same situation with my LED Christmas lights last year. I determined that the bleed current my X10 appliance switch uses to tell if the load has been turned on, was sufficient to illuminate the LED bulbs at a very low but noticeable level.

I did not test to see how much current was used then, and I just now tested a 35 bulb LED str> I have two Leviton 6227W outlets outside my house which have been used for

Reply to
Jim Baber

Reply to
Gemini

The X10 AM486 Appliance Module also has local control and a sense current which will cause LEDs to glow dimly. Directions have been provided by some users on the X10 Forum for relatively simple surgery on relatively recent module circuitry to eliminate the sense current. I don't recall seeing anything about Leviton outlets, but the OP can try a search on

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Ido Bartana's website
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has a lot of info on module modifications, however I understand that much of the circuit information is for older versions of the module circuit boards.

Reply to
Charles Sullivan

I have converted most of my outside christmas lighting to LED and have not seen this. I DO still have a few strings of regular lights. That's probably allowing the leakage current through so it doesn't keep my LED lights on dim. Try plugging in one string of regular lights and see if this solves your problem.

Reply to
Dick

Dick wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Sure enough, we added more stuff with standard lights, and the problem was solved.

Reply to
Eric

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