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Sudden Nuttty X10 Behavior.

Hello.

I've been using X10 stuff in my house for about 3 1/2 years with absolutely zero problems. Over the weekend, however, my house has apparently become possessed.

I don't have a lot of stuff - four regular X10 switches, a motion detector in the garage to turn on the inside entryway light (one of the switches), and four PCS switches in the home theatre. I noticed the other night that the red status lights on all the PCS switches were flashing red. Weird. I plugged in the multicontroller and couldn't control them via X10. The same goes for anything in the house X10 - nothing worked.

Also, the X10 switch controlled light in the entryway randomly fades itself all the way one, stays like that for a bit, then fades back to nothing. Nope, no X10 interface is plugged in anywhere.

Them, for some weird reason, everything works fine again - PCS switches, lamp modules, etc. I was just waking upstairs before, and suddenly the entryway light did its thing, and at the same time the bank of PCS switches (I could see both) starting blinking red.

What could possible be happening? Is this interference? we have nothing new plugged in - I have a filter in place for the undercabinet lighting, but that's working fine.

Help! My house is driving me insane!

Kris

Reply to
kpfeif
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Based upon your symptoms, I would bet on interference from something in your house. Years ago, I had a similar problem from a halogen light with a dimmer switch. All X10 became unreliable when I used the dimmer switch, but it took awhile to figure this out. You may have some luck debugging the problem if you have someone else go around and turn things off while you watch the blinking lights.

Roger

Reply to
Roger

I don't. That was my first thought - it would make sense. It seems that right after I turn on the light, it fades itself off. A logical response if I just turned the neighbor's living room light on...

Is there a cheap way to debug things? Would this also explain the flashing red LED on the PCS switches?

Reply to
kpfeif

If you're using a CM11A interface, X10's Activehome software has a "Find other computers" function which will map PLC signals by housecode and unit. Perhaps this will help you determine whether a neighbor's use of X10 is interfering with yours.

(The CM11A will presumably not respond to noise on the line which might otherwise be causing your modules to switch on or off.)

Reply to
Charles Sullivan

Do you have a coupler installed? Perhaps one of your neighbors (with whom you might be sharing a transformer) has also installed some X-10 (or other) lighting controllers. I seriously doubt your house is haunted. :-))

The unit is called a signal block coupler. X-10 Pro PZZ01. You may also require a signal bridge (X-10 Pro XPCP).

Reply to
Frank Olson

Interesting - a Halogen light we have in the house starting acting a bit weird the other day...I'll unplug it and give it a shot.

Reply to
kpfeif

You might also try changing the address on the switch to see if the problem is with the switch or the address (noise).

Martin

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Reply to
AutomatedOutlet.com

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