X10 and fluorescent lights

On/off is probably OK, but I doubt a dimmer function will work.

On/Off may not be OK. Depending on the brand, many CFL's spew all sort of electrical noise back into the electrical wiring. This noise can interfere with X-10. I have some that work just fine and others that play havoc with X-10.

Yep, not unless they're the more expensive (often much more) type than clearly state they support being operated from a dimmer.

It might make sense to go for LED lighting. More expensive initially, but over the lifetime of the LEDs probably cheaper than fluorescents.

Well, ON is probably ok :-)

I have a 120V 4W LED produced by Lumoform that produces more noise than any CFL I have tested. Here is a photo of the X10 signal just fitting between the noise bursts:

The X10 signal is at mid-screen and near both sides of the trace. It fits in the little gap after each zero crossing before the switching supply in the LED starts up. The XTB-IIR can actually recover that X10 signal.

Jeff

I don't use dimmer at all. pj

Some brands of bulb work OK, others create noise.

I have a whole bunch of Greenlite bulbs that are x-10 compatible. They're several years old so I dont know if they're changed the recipe for them. I had problems with Lights of America and Fein. I ended up wiring a humongus 1mh choke in series with each fixture to get them to work.

A bit more expensive, I also have wired a Leviton 6287 5amp Universal blocking filter in series with the fixture to get it to work too.

-dickm

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

I had both LED and fluorescent lighting, but I had to replace all the LED lighting (with fluorescent) when I began using X10 because they destroyed the X10 signals.

I've also tried dimmable fluorescent lightbulbs with mixed results. They light level drops much faster and they sometimes refused to relight if turned on unless the brightness was at the maximum.

I have had LED problems as well. It's a shame they can take a technology that is noise free by itself and then design cheap power supplies that create all sorts of noise. One set of LED puck lights I purchased at Home Depot were so bad, they emitted enough RF energy to stop my wireless mouse and keyboard from working. I ended up throwing away the power supply that came with the lights and modifying an old Dell 19v laptop supply to take its place. They are selling this poorly designed crap all over the place. There is no way it meets FCC regulations, but no one seems to be enforcing those regulations these days.

I wonder what it would do to powerline ethernet I've been thinking of getting. pj

I only bought one of those fluorescent replacement bulbs once for a non-X10 circuit for trial. It was advertised as lasting much longer than incandescent bulbs, but in my case it lasted much shorter. Though it may have been just a statistical anomaly, I haven't tried another one since. pj

The thinking seems to be that some CF bulbs don't take as well to being frequently turned on/off as well as incadescents.

Last March I replaced 75% of the lights in my house with CFLs (I think all N:Vision brand from Home Depot.). I have a combination of about half and half - some are controlled by X10 switches and some aren't.

My experiences from nearly a year of CLFs and X10:

1. Interference with X10 signal generated by the CFLs - none confirmed. All X10 controls are as responsive as they were before the transition. However, see #2 about spurious dimming.

1. CFLs on a WS467. Dimming not supported and not advisable. I could 'dim' the light but I noticed no difference in light output until the bulb turned off at about half dimmed. It buzzed lowly as the dimming level increased. I have disabled local dimming which I had previously enabled by modding the switch. Sometimes I hear a slight buzzing sound from the wall switch itself which goes away when I turn the lights OFF then back ON again. My guess is that the switch is trying to dim for some reason. This is on a switch that still supports local dimming - so I don't know if someone accidentally dimmed it, or if stray X10 signals [possibly from the CFLs] caused the switch to go to a dimmer level.

2. CFLs on a WS467 - lights turn ON just fine and will go OFF, but the CLF flickers about once every 2-3 seconds. Apparently this is caused by the local sensing current [so the X10 switch will turn on when you manually turn on a lamp that has it's own on/off witch]. I have not yet tried to modify the switches to disable this feature - reather I have resorted to adding a incandscent light bulb to the circuit. For my porch lights, this is one of four bulbs, but in the kids's bedrooms, this is one of two bulbs - so I'm not getting as much electricity savings as I could. I've heard about adding a suitable resistor to the socket to remedy, but haven't felt secure enough. I do plan to add a small 25W light to the porch circuit to illuminate the house number, then I can use 4 CFLs instead of 3.

1. CLF life. I have not put the CFLs in high-traffic (turning on and off a lot) locations, or places where they would be on only for short periods of time. And some of them are recessed in the ceiling. But I have only had two bulbs fail - one after 3 months and one after 8 months. I haven't yet requested a refund on those bulbs. All the rest are still going strong.

2. Dim start-up. At first, the CFLs almost instantly reached full brightness, but after just a few weeks, the slower startup was noticeable. now, after 8 months, it is VERY noticeable and becoming annoying. I have actually added some incandescents back in to a fixture (still a mix) where we couldn't tolerate the delay. When I replaced the few that did burn out with new bulbs of the same vintage, there was no apparent difference in overall brightness so they don't seem to be getting dimmer with age (yet).

1. X10 switch life. So far I have not had to replace any of my wall switches. Of course, we avoid dimming them, but they haven't shown any sign of abuse from either driving the CFL or from any interference.

YMMV.

Jim

I tried this with a X10 wall dimmer using only on/off. Two different brands. It worked for about 2 days. The lights were destroyed. I'm guessing that the off sense current did them in.

I use a lot of X10 appliance modules to control outside Christmas lighting. One must be sure to unplugged the lights when trouble shooting since there is always current present. The other interesting thing are LED lights. They have a slight glow when off from the sense current. I resolved this by assuring that there is at least of regular light string in the X10 run. For those electronic controller devices I put a relay between the X10 and the device.

Asia!