Re: OK.. Weird one here - a shredder

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

>I picked up a new paper shredder the other day.  I plugged it in in my home
>office, and started using it.  (same circuit as some smathouse X10 stuff...)
>
>Well, when I use it C1 (smarthouse 2-way ) keeps repeating (C1-ON) when ever
>I fire up the shreader!  I also get C2 on's to the basic X10 lamp module I
>have on the same circuit...
>
>What the heck to I do?  It's not a "signal sucker" problem, as I only get
>these bizare X10 events at the time that the motor on the shredder fires up!

This one may be tough. A filter may not help. It depends on which of two
scenarios (see next paragraph) is applicable.

I suspect the shredder motor is pulling the line voltage down causing a
brown-out reset by the MCU (not so) smarthouse (I assume you mean SmartHome)
two-way. Or, the motor noise is somehow triggering a reset directly. I doubt
a filter will solve the former but may solve the latter. I don't recall
whether you can disable local control or even local control reports in these
two-ways. I have three but they exhibit different flaws and I don't use
them.

This would explain a few similar reports. I just never made the connection
until you noted that you have the smarthouse (sic) two-way. They report
local control changes, thus generating valid PLC commands.

Given the Manchester encoding used by the X-10 powerline protocol, I think
it's impossible that a noise source can generate valid X-10 commands out of
whole cloth. I've been taken to task by several people for insisting that
there has to be a transmitter that is sending the signals when there are
apparently valid signals being logged.

X-10 has documented the brown-out reset case in one of their FAQs.