Has anybody here played with both The Energy Detective
All of my X-10 modules on the house phase TED was talking on became unreliable as hell and the monitor LED on TED would stop blinking during any X-10 traffic. Disconnect TED and things returned to normal.
Are you using a coupler or a repeater in the circuit breaker box? If so, does disconnecting it affect the problem?
-- Bobby G.
I do have a ACT repeater in the setup, I haven't tried disabling it. That wouldn't be a good option anyway because my house is large enough that the repeater is required to get good coverage across both phases.
I don't think TED will play nice with X10.
I asked prior to not buying...
You can remove the repeater, if you use the XTB on your controller(s)...
The company who made TED promised a new version by end of Summer, or was it year end?
I'm waiting for THAT!
Jack :)
It *would* be good to know if it's the source of the problem, wouldn't it?
Since your problem description seems to include information that relates to phase issues, a coupler/repeater would be the first place I'd look. Since I am not sure how TED hooks up, my first thought is that you've coupled the phases in two places, once through the ACT and once through TED. It might also be that the ACT is repeating the signal from TED and corrupting it.
I'd also try an XTB instead of a coupler. Much better results without all the issues attendant of active couplers and repeaters. This TED thing might just be yet another repeater-induced issue and another good reason to use a stronger transmitter in the first place.
Of course, if you've got a lot of X-10 controllers like Maxi's and Mini's you'll have to buy more than one XTB (I've got two in each house, will probably buy four more to have four in each house).
I bought two different types of passive couplers to use with the XTB but so far, I am coupled through the street transformer and haven't need to couple the phases. To quote the movie _Aliens_ "That's a big ****ing signal!"
-- Bobby G.
Plus the 5000 model, also not yet released, is supposed to support an external interface for accessing the data. A required feature, IMO. It's not very useful without it.
I did get some interesting numbers out of it while it was up and running, but yeah, I really wanted the 5000 model also.
I got a reply from the manufacturer and they admit they've had a few reports about X-10 problems. They told me that TED uses a 136Khz carrier and that some X-10 hardware has a wide enough receiver bandpass to hear it and try to react. In my case, I noticed I had a problem when I saw lights on that normally are only on at night and I couldn't turn them back off again. After investigation, anything on the same phase TED was on was pretty much screwed.
This isn't looking like it's going to work, but they did offer to let me return the unit for a refund.
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