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Re: Cause of some major X10 problems found



"bruceR" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46e604c6$0$17101$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Things started going haywire at my Houston home last week with lights
coming
> on randomly and no control to some areas even with an XTB at the main
> controller and a Smartlinc plug-in Repeater.  I quckly found the culprit:
A
> light weight electeronic cellphone charger from a no-name Chinese factory.
> The almost identical looking Plantronics charger showed nothing on the
> Monterey tester but the phone charger spat out a continuous string of what
> showed up BSC (bad start code) messages. As those familiar with the
Monterey
> tester know, the unit will show BSC for anything it doesn't really
> understand.

I seem to recall postings that indicated a device like a noisy PS could
never generate a signal randomly capable of triggering an X-10 device but
your experience seems to indicate that's not so.

I've reluctantly concluded that anything that gets plugged into the house
wiring has to be bench tested with the Monterey first.  I've been nailed by
wall wart-sized switched power supplies before, but mostly by UPS's and PC
power supplies.  I printed up a whole bunch of small stickers that say
either "X10 SAFE" or "X10 FILTER NEEDED" to attach to the bottom of all new
equipment so that even if they get separated from the X-10 filter by
accident, I remember they need one.  I also keep a database of all new
purchases that indicates the test date and voltage drop the device causes,
as well as if it spews X-10 band noise.  Just in case the label falls off.
(-:

Regrettably, not all units that pass the bench test behave well in the
field.  More than once I've discovered that two pieces of equipment that
tested well separately showed a signal-sucking effect when plugged into the
same power strip.

In the case of noisemakers like the PS you've got, the Monterey spots them
pretty quickly because the 190 reading buffer overflows in seconds with
BSC's.  I've found it overall easier to test new gear than to have to hunt
it down later.  How strong were the noise signals the Monterey was
registering?

>  The soultion was to simply plug the charger into an X10 Filter.

There are a number of Ebay vendors selling the X-10 5A filters for about $5
each.  A much better price than I was paying at Worthington!  ($17+)  I just
stocked up again because I bought a bunch of small UPS's to handle the DVR's
and other devices that tend to lose their programming during power blips.
Most of the new switched power supplies I've tested (and nearly all new PS's
are switched, it seems) have shown either no degradation of the X-10 signal,
or actually a slight improvement!  Not sure why the latter is true, except
that the Monterey electronics are probably interacting with the components
in the gear under test.  The improvement is usually never more than a tenth
of a volt, so it's just as likely a reading error as it is a true reading.

--
Bobby G.






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