Re: Insteon now or wait?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

> The LM14A was killing bulbs in a matter of several weeks or a couple of
> months as opposed to the several years life I've become accustomed to
since
> I started using X-10.
>
> Exploding (standard household type) light bulbs are very rare and usually
> the fault of the bulb itself

I agree. But I am not willing to say a switch could *never* blow up a bulb.
It only takes one injury to get into a court dispute with serious
consequences.

> but I'm sure your lawyer will cite this
> precedent to prove they can indeed occur (although the bulb in question
may
> not have been a standard household type).
>
>      http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1131098716049

The Supremes nearly catch fire from a flaming filament falling to earth!
Let's hope the question of whether light bulbs can explode never reaches the
Supreme Court.  They already know the answer!

It's one case among so many that I know about.  People often don't believe
how many people are injured every year from common items like light bulbs,
soda bottles and pocket lighters.  After you've seen the burn photos of
women whose lighters ignited in their purses, time after time, you begin to
realize the potential for harm.  Soda bottles have blinded more people than
most people realize:

http://bjo.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/88/1/69

The abstract titled: "Serious eye injuries caused by bottles containing
carbonated drinks" reports that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) estimated that 32,000 people were treated in emergency rooms for
bottle related trauma in 1974.

> If Insteon were in use at this facility, I'm sure we would have heard
about
> it at the time of installation. After all, SmartHome is trumpeting that
> their Insteon desktop software, which has yet to ship except for a few
beta
> copies, has been named "Product of the Year" by Electronic House. ;)

It must have been a very slow year.  PC Magazine long ago taught me that
magazines exist to sell magazines and will gladly tout vaporware and
promises - especially from big advertisers!  Something tells me Smarthome
buys ad space in EH.

> If bulbs were filled with an explosive mixture, few would last beyond the
> first attempt to turn them on.

Ah, but bulbs can be borderline bad and when coupled with a borderline bad
switch end up failing where they might not have failed alone.   All a jury
has to find is that the contributed to the injury to put them on the legal
hook for damages.  I think, as I've described in my other note to James,
they'll make that connection far more easily than they'll understand the
true technical nature of the choke problem.

> As an aside, I have heard from someone who saw the same thing with several
> LM14As. It seems odd because my LM14A had been in use for a couple of
years.
> Another, even older, continues to function as it always has.

What's your best guess about how it's burning out bulbs earlier than usual?
Is it just because it's no longer slowly ramping up the power supplied to
the bulb and thus "shocking" the filament more than before?

--
Bobby G.