Re: Water heater eating X-10 signal

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Interesting - the laptop option would make it more portable and I am pretty
>sure the one I have in mind has a LINE IN and if it fries I would be out the
>$20 I paid for it at - you guessed it - "fell off a truck" Bay!  (Don't know
>why I called it AUX!)

I did a quickie feasibility test using my scope card and just clipping my
scope leads to R9 (Pin13) & C3 (Pin18). There's a screenshot at...

     http://davehouston.net/ESM1-TEST.gif

I forgot to include the scale on the 60Hz trace. It's 1v/DIV so this pin can
probably connect directly to the soundcard. The PLC signal will need to be
attenuated - the 39K & 10K resistors I show here...

     http://davehouston.net/learn.htm

should work.

I'm not an engineer so I'd appreciate any suggestions that Dan & Jeff might
have.

As luck would have it, I was able to capture some noise which I see
periodically. It shows up as 1 bar (my ESM1 is pre-ELK) but does not affect
any of my X-10 devices (although it might if I had a weaker signal).

Using this with the techniques & software I recommend in the IR/RF link
should allow you to record lengthy PLC sequences. We don't need really high
recording resolution. My scope sample rate was 20K/s and we could go even
lower with the soundcard to minimize disk space.

Sorry - I think this obsoletes Bobby's Monterey. ;)