Another Strange One

[Chuck]

X10 is like voodoo. You plug it in, sacrifice a live chicken,  
sprinkle the switch with fresh blood and hope for the best. Kind of  
like SCSI.

It has gotten a lot better that the old days with the cheaper  
switches. The theory of X10 is sound. It just fails in implementation  
some times.

Glad you got it figured out. Those type of problems can be a real  
hair puller.

I have filters everywhere. I plug a filter into the wall and then put  
a surge protector in the filter. Everything non X10 gets plugged into  
the surge protector. While that may be overkill I have not had any  
problems with unaccounted signals causing stuff to go on/off or  
failing to respond.

There is one issue that I have found with the Smarthome plug in  
modules. They seem to lose the address on occasion. At my vacation  
home they are left for months at a time and when I get over there the  
lights don't work. I did some troubleshooting and found that they had  
switched addresses. Weird.

One of my Insteon/X10 switches did that to me about a month ago. I  
just checked an all lights on for the different house codes and at K  
it went on. Then I traced the unit number to 13 and I just changed  
the code for that switch in X4X. I figured if it wanted to be K13 who  
am I to try and make it something else?

There is one circuit that I had to put in a power booster and that  
has fixed that problem.

Chuck

On Mar 1, 2008, at 8:40 AM, Scott Gardner wrote:

> Several weeks ago the light in the master bedroom closet became  
> "unautomated". It's controlled by an Insteon Icon relay switch  
> (working in X10 mode) and an MS13 (I think) motion detector.  
> Everything else seemed to be functioning correctly. The log looked  
> good as it was showing the motion triggers and sending the on's and  
> off's, but the light responded to neither. So, I'm wondering what  
> was blocking the signal from reaching the Icon switch, but all  
> other devices were working. Since I have some spare CM11's around I  
> decided to swap the one responsible for talking to that switch.  
> Bingo, that fixed the problem. Seems like the CM11 just got too  
> weak or something. A couple of weeks later another strange  
> (actually stranger) thing happened. Now the same closet light would  
> always come on with motion, but never shut off. Now I was really  
> stumped. So I'm thinking, what's new or changed in the home  
> recently. Starting my investigation in the basement near the AC  
> panels and the CM11's I immediately noticed the new AirPort extreme  
> base station that had replaced the old Airport "snow" base station.  
> I unplugged it and now the light once again functioned normally. I  
> don't have any of the plug in filters around (I have never used any  
> filters so far), so how do I correct this issue? Well, all I did  
> was plug the AirPort into the other leg of the split AC on that  
> panel and all is working fine again. Out of curiosity I also  
> plugged my Elk X10 signal meter into the same circuit as the  
> AirPort expecting to see a lot of noise, but it showed none at all,  
> zero, zilch. I'm not sure what the lesson(s) is here, but it was  
> strange enough that I thought I should share.
>
> -- Scott --