Re: Cause of some major X10 problems found

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

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

> The Marrick device used a TW523 and thus saw only the valid codes that the
> TW523 could report. It would never see a code that contained 111 (except
for
> the startcode) or 000 sequences as the TW523 would not report them.

Maybe yours did (you are relating direct experience I assume) but mine came
with a device that looked nothing like the TW523 or its X-10 Pro version:

http://www.marrickltd.com/_archive/lynx105.htm

They explicitly stated the analysis software would not work with anything
but their own controller. IIRC, it saw all the raw Manchester 1/0 bits on
the powerline and then grouped them according to code content.  If you
recall, I even sent a screen snapshot of the output showing the raw
complement bits to you.

There was a toggle key where you could see the 1/0 complement bits or
collapse that view into the actual X-10 binary format.  Through the rather
novel use of graphics on the line about the raw data they were able to then
"group" bits that were valid into X-10 meaningful frames, indicating the
cycle gap, single valid frames and entire valid commands.  It read in all
the bits its buffer could hold and then processed them.  That's why I'm
certain it would be useful in analyzing something like Bruce's very noisy
power supply.

I used it to analyze two Palmpads "colliding" and the Lynx showed pretty
much what the Monterey did.   Lots of "almost" codes, some valid codes, some
single frames and some valid commands that were on a house code that neither
transceiver was set to.  I have all the screenprints somewhere, but I have
little more than a passing interest in this subject and certainly not enough
to go dig up the LynX-10 data.  I'm quite content to wait until Jeff has the
noisy power supply in hand to see what's what.

This discussion reminds me of astronomy where there are hard and fast
theories about what can and can't be until new evidence arrives, usually
through the use of better tools like space-based telescopes, large array
telescopes and image processing.  The new and better evidence usually blows
the old theories out of the water.

Scientists once again had to rewrite the textbooks when a NASA's Stardust
mission traveled almost 3 billion miles during a seven-year round-trip from
Earth to Comet Wild-2 and back again.  The craft managed to snag some real
comet material.  It turns out the composition was far different from what
earth-based observations had predicted and the legend of the comet as a
dirty snowball was pretty much put to rest.  That's why I'm more than
willing to wait until Jeff actually has our "comet" in his hands and can
observe its real-world behavior as opposed to theorizing how it should
behave.

--
Bobby G.