Re: Water heater eating X-10 signal

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4638bc97.100829953@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "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. ;)

It's not going into the junkbin just yet unless you can shrink all of this
down to the size of a cigarette pack with a line cord.  (-:  But the ability
to capture raw line data to disk with just a sound card should be extremely
useful in debugging certain sets of problems, particularly something like
overnight phantoms and noise related events.  Every weapon in the arsenal
helps.  I'll bet it would help solve Mr. Land's problem or at least shed
serious light on it.

With the plan I had to distribute a number of wall warts around the house
feeding a rotary switch and then the ESM1, this would give a very good way
of being able to inspect the powerline at several places around the house
quite easily and in great detail AND with a recorded log.  That could be a
*very* good tool for analyzing the effect of things like signal suckers on
the entire household wiring network.  Before this, with no way to record or
compare the signals other than through the LED bar graph display, it wasn't
really workable.  Now it is.  Good work!  With both the power feed and the
I/O line on sockets, I should even be able to retain its function as a
portable device.

--
Bobby G.