Re: LampLinc 2000STW - mystery solved

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"John" <jonjon.winn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>(snipped)
>>
>> You are probably experiencing a brownout (a lowering of voltage, perhaps
>> just before a full outage) that is affecting the PIC. This is a design
>> flaw
>> - it has nothing to do with your power being substandard as everyone
>> experiences these at one time or another.
>>
>Hi Dave..
>You could be right.  We just moved in last November..New developement, all
>underground electric.  We have had terrible occurances of very short power
>outages..Like one to two seconds..Also have noticed as you mentioned some
>brownouts..Once was very odd..I was standing in the kitchen (open floor
>plan) and it even appeared that different areas of the house were dimming at
>different levels.(this was non X10 lighting)
>I reported it to our electrical coop.  They were unaware that our
>subdivision was having any problems so they came out and removed our meter
>and installed some sort of a "recorder" and they asked me to email them
>every time any outage or brownout happened.  He said part of the problem is
>electrical storms cause the substation breakers to trip and switch to
>another route..I told him I think the fact it does it so fast is what causes
>problems. Electrical stuff doesn't even get a chance to fully turn off..He
>compared my readings with the readings at the substation and said they
>didn't match so was why they wanted to put the meter/recorder thing on..They
>just picked it up late last week so hope they find the problem.  I have
>never in my life had such problems with power outages...
>Thanks for the heads up on the units..Strange thing tho, it's always the
>same five modules..The others seem to maintain their memories.....
>
>John

The latest PICs will operate down to 2.5V. You see 2-3 second power
glitches. Pressing and holding the programming switch for ~3 seconds puts
the units into address mode. It may be that internal capacitors store enough
energy to keep the PIC going but that the circuit associated with the
programming switch drains off much faster and the PIC sees the button as
"pressed". Differences in component tolerances or firmware could account for
the fact that only some are affected.

3-4 years ago we had frequent outages but I cannot recall any for the past
two years until the recent one. There was about a 1.5 hour outage. The power
came back on just long enough for me to start resetting clocks, VCR, etc.
before flickering off for a few seconds. The latter flicker got the LampLinc
module.