Re: X-10 RF home automation being overwhelmed by M2 OFF, C2 OFF and Gxx DIM signals

[The Daring Dufas <the-daring-dufas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/29/2011 3:01 PM, Robert Green wrote:
> "The Daring Dufas"<the-daring-dufas@xxxxxxxxxx>  wrote in message
> news:j3gi0g$89e$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> <stuff snipped>
>
>>
>> Back in the late 1980's I was working and living in the country of
>> Californiastan when the community I was in at the time started having
>> problems with their electric garage doors opening and closing as if
>> possessed by some evil door opener. It turned out that the US Navy
>> was testing the big search radars on some ships in the bay. Those big
>> powerful radars were producing an RF harmonic signal that was just right
>> to screw with the RF remote controls for a lot of openers. :-)
>
> Yes, I was aware of them.  Lutron's Radio RA system had to add a second RF
> channel in NYC because of interference from a source that wasn't going away.
> Read: government.
>
> We just had a round of that a few years ago near DC at Andrews AFB and
> others in Denver had the same problem.  I know that two military research
> labs nearby (I live between the two on almost a perfect straight line are
> tasked with IED jammer development so I wouldn't be surprised if the signal
> correlated with elevated threat levels.  The DC area is as the Pentagon says
> "target rich environment."
>
> But in reality I think Dave is probably onto the real source:  The local
> power company has just instituted a program where they hook a receiver/relay
> between your AC and the powerline.  In brownouts, they can shut your AC off
> remotely.  I was going to apply for it because we don't use our CAC anymore
> and have switched to window ACs, but that seemed to be cheating so I decided
> not to.
>
> The "blips" started appearing a month or two ago, when summer began.  They
> are not there today, with the temps in the cool, dry 70's (the benefit of a
> hurricane - wonderful, cool, clean air for a day or afterwards).  Now I have
> to download some temperature data and try to correlate that with the times
> the bogies appear in my Homevision log file (records all externally
> generated commands to log file).  The days of endless bogies generate huge
> log files, 100 to 1000 times the normal size.
>
> --
> Bobby G.
>

I'm an old broadcast engineer/two way radio tech and I had to track down
RF interference all the time. My friend who worked for the local
power company as an electrical engineer in charge of their
communications told me that back in the 1970's they were tracking down
a lot of RF interference caused by doorbell transformers. I have an
idea that today's proliferation of "Wall Warts" could be responsible
for a lot of RF and power line borne interference. It's something to
consider.

TDD