Re: X10 Wall Switches Stops Responding Remotely

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Gary Brown" <garyjbrown@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:sJVwg.138$yQ.124@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi,
>
> I replace two X10 wall switches today (only 1 was bad - I
> misdiagnosed the other case).

What was the misdiagnosis?

Did you bench check the units before installing them, IOW, are your sure the
used switch really works?  What make and model number switches are we
talking about?

I'd take the "yanked" switches, hook them up to a line cord and a lamp and
make sure they are bad.  I'd test them in a part of the house away from
where they are currently installed and with a plain incandescent bulb.  I've
replaced a good gear thinking I had correctly ID'ed the problem when it was
actually something else.

> Now none of the wall switches respond remotely.

None of the new switches or no switches at all?

> Before I reverse my effort to track down
> the culprit (electricity is not my favorite thing to mess with)
> does anyone have a theory of what might have happened.

Bad switch, unrelated signal sucker coming on line somewhere else in the
house recently, noisy CFL's.  Are you using Compact Fluorescents in these
circuits?  If so, the easiest test is to replace the CFL with a regular
incandescent.  If the plain bulb works, you're experience either noise,
signal sucking or both from the CFL bulbs.  That's the most common cause of
remote control failure these days in X-10 lamp circuits.

The symptoms of a noisy bulb are often that you can turn the unit ON
remotely, but once ON, it generates so much line noise that it can't be
turned OFF remotely, only locally.

> One of the two wall switches was new, the other used.

Where did you pick up the used one?

--
Bobby G.