SwitchLinc Reaction to Power Glitches

I have a Smarthome Smartlinc switche and a PowerLinc 1132 controller. In our area when we have storms, we get a few "auto-reclosures" on our electrical utility. That is, lightning strikes the primary (high voltage 44 kV) line somewhere, and our power goes out for just under 1 second until the substation breaker closes again. With a house full of electronics, I've never experienced any damage at all. No signs of a power surge. Just a quick OFF then back ON again. It is almost perfectly timed to make those outdoor motion lights turn on as if you deliberately flicked the switch quickly to turn them on manually. Anyway, within a month of when I received the Smartlinc switch, I noticed it would no longer respond to it's programmed house and unit code. It reset to A1. This happened a few more times before I realized that it was related to the electrical utility reclosures. I have whole house surge suppression too.

Then recently, we had another storm roll through with a few more of these quick outages. Now my PowerLinc controller no longer responds to X10. OK on the USB side. No damage to *any* other equipment.

Anyone else been having trouble with Smarthome products being sensitive to utility power glitches?

RF Dude

Reply to
RF Dude
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I have two related issues. I have a Keypadlinc (the Softouch one with the rubber buttons that they don't sell anymore) which wakes up from a power outage with a seemingly random light pattern. For example, I have two buttons each in their own "group", which is supposed to make them lit permanently. After a power outage, they do not always come back on until the next time you press them or issue their X-10 address. So I have a power loss detection routine that sends a couple commands to reset it.

Everything else was working fine until recently, when I had to replace a Switchlinc. This was my fault; I had a triac switch on my lamp post, which happens to have an outlet on it that I never use. Well, the other day some guys doing concrete work in the street decided they'll save their precious generator fuel and plug their jackhammer into the lamp. The switch literally melted. Fortunately, it did not affect the other three Switchlincs ganged with it. I replaced it with the proper relay switch. This new Switchlinc, while I haven't had much of a chance to see how it reacts to power loss, definitely is a bit sensitive to other activity in the adjacent switches--if I'm tapping them a lot, the lamp switch turns on.

- Mark.

Reply to
Mark Thomas

I found it handy to never use the default code. I wrote a script that would check for status on it. If it ever came back with a value I'd know something went wrong. This assumes you've got a 2-way device on that code. Likewise this works for those X-10 IR motion sensors. None are on the default code and should a signal from one show up I'd know something had gone wrong with one of them.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

Hello RF Dude.. We have the same darn problem..Not sure what is happening but the power only goes off for a second or two..Have a house full of darn lamplincs and appliance lincs and a bunch of them reset to A1..Not sure if this will fix it, but there is a series of commands you can send to it to allow programming or not..If you have the cheapy software that came with the 1132 it has a window to do it..I have locked programming out and will see after next power glitch..One note..If you send the programming lock code you cannot even set the modules manually..Even manual programming is locked out.. John

Reply to
John

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