Re: Do these exist: "Instant on" or very rapid start CFL???

["Robert Green" <robert_green1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Smarty" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:it59cr$32a$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On 6/12/2011 2:07 AM, Robert Green wrote:
> > "Smarty"<nobody@xxxxxxxxxx>  wrote in message
> > news:isul5d$i0f$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >>> <stuff snipped>
> >>>
> >> Thanks Bobby for your great insights and elaboration regarding X-10.
> > I'm worse that a reformed smoker when it comes to preaching XTB.  I
really
> > was just about to dump a lot of time and effort spent with X-10, CPUXA,
> > HomeVision, etc. because the signal propagation became so unreliable.
Even
> > WITH couplers, repeaters and every other thing I threw at it, eventually
> > including a futile "feudal" system of RF transceivers control items
local to
> > them (electrically speaking) because that was the only way to counter
the
> > horrendous amounts of line noise besides filters, and even then the "Did
Not
> > Turn On" events were getting to be the norm.  Totally unacceptable.
> >
> This was the same stage I reached Bobby, but with less effort on my part
> to really solve the problem. I just "gave up" and concluded that the
> X-10 hardware was better suited for a different era.

It's certainly true that X-10 didn't age very gracefully.  But there's not
much in the world that even COULD make the transition to a different
"electronic" era.  AM/FM radios still work, but not TVs.  Think of all the
dead audio and video formats (I have *both* kinds of "video disc" players
I'm keeping for antique value).  X-10's design is remarkable in a number of
ways and uses some pretty clever techniques to do its magic.

Many of its problems come from features other HA systems don't even have,
like local sensing when a user turns a lamp switch on.  I suspect that's the
circuitry that's most vulnerable to line noise and spikes.  Some even come
from its biggest "feature" - its low cost.  People who didn't know what X-10
was were buying it because of their early voucher deals.  Rather than pay
the programmer who developed their obnoxious pop-under ads, they basically
gave away their inventory as a loss-leader.  Or so some wags in the industry
say.  I once calculated from some of their filings that there are up to 2
*million* X-10 users (or should I say owners of X-10 equipment?) out there.
People found out the hard way that it didn't "scale up" well in a quite
insidious way.  Every transmitter is also a signal sucker so the more X-10
devices you have, the more signal degradation you experience.  Reminds me of
some government projects I worked on.  (-:


> >> At one time quite a few years ago, long before fluorescent lighting and
> >> other issues degraded my X-10 system, I had a very workable arrangement
> >> here, and used it without complaints for perhaps 2 decades or longer.
> > That makes you, as I suspected "an early adopter" who likes to keep up
with
> > current technology.  Lots of vendors were selling X-10 gear in the
1980s.
> > It also makes you vulnerable to having some of the noisiest "first
edition"
> > gear out there, as was the case with so many CFL bulbs and the parallel
> > electronic ballast technology for fluorescent tubes.  The early CFL
lamps
> > were very X-10 unfriendly.  The very early CFLs I bought, Chinese-made
> > "Lights of America" $10 bulbs were like miniature broadcast stations,
they
> > were so noisy they could pass beyond a normal X-10 filter with ease.
> >
> A lot of X-10 hardware I added to my system came from the X-10 web  site
> and their many enticing offers. They often sold "buy this and get that
> free" or "buy two and we will give you two more" types of deals and I am
> a total sucker for discounts, rebates, etc. I wound up buying and
> installing at least 20 more X-10 items during that period, most of which
> worked fine until the fluorescent lighting and switched power supplies
> began to multiply in my home.

That's a predictable pattern. As offensive as their ads were, they were
effective.  Who didn't have one or two lights that had switches at the far
end of the house or in inconvenient places?  Who wouldn't risk the very
little money it took to get one starter kit and see that the stuff was,
indeed, close to magic for some intractable electrical problems?  From
there, X-10 just took over the house because they kept sending me vouchers
that basically rained nearly free equipment for almost a year.

I began using X-10 when there were still photographic darkrooms.  I had the
room lights hooked up to two appliance modules, one B1, the other B4.  With
a belt RF transmitter, I had to press the two buttons in sequence to get the
lights to turn on.  Very handy and because it was so cheap, piggybacking two
(or even more) modules to make a "security code" of sorts prevented someone
in another room from accidentally activating the lights when the paper safe
was open.  Also extremely useful in preventing "spike ons" - I've never had
a spike turn on two piggybacked modules and unfortunately, after a storm,
it's a crapshoot what's going to come on by itself.  HomeVision now
supervises restarts after a power blip, but I still piggyback critical items
ever since I came home to find the X-10'ed vacuum cleaner had been running
all day. )-:  What a stink - the bag, of course, was almost full for maximum
stenchability.

> >> Over the course of the last few years, I have moved a lot of my branch
> >> circuits over to a transfer panel for a standby generator, removed the
> >> phase couplers and amplifiers and some filters I had added, and
> >> essentially removed most of my X-10 components except those within very
> >> close proximity to one another.
> > You are not alone in describing the devolution of your X-10 system.
There
> > used to be only two defenses to the problems X-10 experienced with its
new
> > neighbors (switched power supplies, mostly) on the home powerline:
> >
> > One was extensive filtering which gets a little tiring after the tenth
one
> > is installed.  Filters  comes with as many problems as it solves.   )-:
> >
> > The other was decentralizing - the feudal approach.  The constant
failing of
> > remote signaling leads to disconnection, module by module.  I call it
the
> > feudal approach because it parallels the way the Vandals sacked Rome and
> > destroyed the remarkable lines of communication and commerce of the
Empire
> > from the outside in.  Far reaching outposts are abandoned and central
> > command devolves into local "stronghold" garrisons that are situated and
act
> > in a way favorable to staying alive.  But I digress . . .
> >
> I particularly began to experience severe signal attenuation as I began
> using power strips, or otherwise loading my branch circuits. I
> attributed this to shunt capacitance but may not be correct in this
> assumption. I briefly played with different power strips, but as I got
> less control of distant devices, my solution also became more localized
> (and thus less useful).

Yep.  I had a bunch of power strips that very, very ironically were labeled
X-Ten that completely absorbed X-10 signals.  Stopped 'em dead unless the
controller/transmitter was plugged into the same outlet or the power strip
was plugged into an appliance module.  It took an enormous amount of
detective work (and shelling out $320 for a Monterey analyzer) to finally
figure things out.

It also takes a known monomaniac like me to *care* enough to run down the
intermittent problems that plagued me.  I learned how many things can affect
X-10 transmission.  One of my favorites was the CFL you could turn on, but
not off (because the noise it emitted on blocked any remote commands).
That's why there are so many sites that list the potential X-10 problems.  I
wouldn't recommend it for non-techies.  It looks easy but isn't.  But I can
set up systems for people who need it and don't care at all how it works.
It's *very* useful for people with disabilities.

> >> I have no doubts whatsoever that proper filters, additional amplifiers,
> >> careful removal of the worst offending noise sources, etc. could tame
my
> >> system. I just no longer have an interest in doing any of this, and I
do
> >> have many hard-wired Ethernet devices doing the specific things I need
> >> to do with little or no problems.
> > Then you're probably NOT a candidate for the XTB.  The optimum point
seems
> > to be in the first stages of X-10 disconnection, where you stop using it
for
> > things that are going to piss you off like outside lights that burn all
day
> > because X-10 signals are iffy.  You've moved into the next stage:
you've
> > converted critical (I assume) functions that used to be X-10 into
hardwired
> > Ethernet devices, inherently more reliable and manageable but IIRC,
orders
> > of magnitude more expensive than X-10.  Has that changed?
> >
> > I've gone all out and attached an XTB to my all-housecode transceiver
and to
> > some other critical transmitting gear so I could indeed go back to "plug
and
> > play."  That's more than most people would do - for them an XTB coupler
> > repeater might suffice but I'm a PC builder and there's a lot of EMI
running
> > around my house and I wanted the lights to just work.  And for PLC, the
> > commands always get through now.  It's just like it used to be in 1985
when
> > I pulled all the light switches and converted them to X-10.
> >

> I am really beyond an X-10 line carrier solution. I have also
> unsuccessfully tried other power line carrier devices, including
> intercoms, CCTV surveillance cameras, and Ethernet extenders, and not a
> single device I have tried works reliably when my fluorescent lighting
> is turned on. Some of it does not work even when the fluorescent
> lighting is turned off.

I can assume from your radio operations that you may have a level of EMI
that's beyond what most of us see.   A long time ago when I was a police
reporter, the *thing* to have was a Bearcat programmable police scanner (at
a time when the Regency 10 channel crystal unit was king).  I brought my new
toy over to my ham friend, we programmed in all the local channels. Worked
fine.  We programmed one channel to match his new handheld VHF portable.
Every time he keyed that stinking radio up near the Bearcat, it lost all its
programming.  Reprogrammed, it worked fine, but if he was just a few feet
away, whap!  All gone. From that experience and from hearing my girlfriend's
radio, TV, telephone AND record player all emitting signals from the three
HUGE AM radio towers across the street even when turned off, I realized
radios can do some strange things when near by.

In a perverse way I am glad so many people have given up on X-10.  I've been
able to buy huge assortments of modules on FeeBay for 10 cents or less on
the dollar.  More for me!

> >> I've had commercial and ham FCC licenses since the 1950s, and have
built
> >> 35 Heathkits in total, as well as spent most of my professional career
> >> as an electrical / electronics engineer, so the technical aspects are
> >> comfortable and familiar.
> > I apologize if it sounded like I was impugning your CV.  It's infinitely
> > superior to mine.  In getting to know Jeff and several other
> > designer/builders of X-10 gear I've realized that it does take highly
> > specialized gear to make sense of the X-10 signal.  You obviously know
that
> > the X-10 signal is not just an bit train without any error correction
> > whatsoever.  It's primitive but it's there and it seems to be enough.
Take
> > a look at Jeff's pages - you'll be able to appreciate the quality of the
> > units, the thought that went into building them and his ongoing
commitment
> > to continuous improvement.
> >
> No apologies needed Bobby, and I was merely trying to make the point
> that I am not over my head with this stuff, and have spent a lot of
> hours with logic analyzers, DSOs, spectrum analyzers, and much home
> built RF gear, and find the X-10 problem to be much better solved with
> other methods rather than X-10.

I'm relieved.  I can be *very* insulting when I try.  (-:

There's no doubt that hardwiring is preferable to X-10 control wherever it's
possible. I've switched over things to HomeVision's relay controllers if the
item's critical.  With all the problem paths on the X-10 troubleshooting
tree I'd certainly be tempted to go in another direction if I were starting
over.  Some things that X-10 did weren't really suitable for such a slow
protocol.  Temperature sensing was one and motion detection another.  Those
two functions put too many commands on the line and collisions became
inevitable. However, for straight up load control, nothing comes close to
the price range and assortment of available gear.  There's no fear with X-10
that the company might sink and drag its protocol down with it.  It's in the
public domain now, which is GOOD for standards, at least IMHO.

> I sincerely do believe that all the
> false triggering of my lights whenever the CFLs are turned on is
> entirely a noise issue, and that a longer code or better protected code
> would minimize or prevent this problem entirely. There are no collisions
> of actual X-10 in this situation since no deliberate X-10 transmissions
> are being sent. The X-10 receivers are totally responding to the noise
> and interpreting it as if it were X-10, and my lights come on all over
> the place with regularity and relatively annoying frequency within
> seconds or minutes after certain CFLs are switched on manually in other
> parts of the house.

I'd love to see what an analyzer says is going on.  Do you have any two way
modules?  What kind of transmitters/controllers are you using?  Live
anywhere near the DC area?  (-:

Did I mention monomania?  Every hinky X-10 installation calls to me and my
faithful meter, Tonto.  Watched too much TV growing up growing up, I guess.
Hi, ho, Silver!

> >> I attended classes with Irv Reed, who (quite
> >> famously) co-developed the Reed Solomon coding methods (at MIT /
Lincoln
> >> Labs) still used prominently to mitigate bit errors in communication
> >> channels, and still feel up to the task of analyzing and designing such
> >> things.
> > Obviously.  (-:
> >
> > I'm sure you have the IQ, but even the smartest guys who design and
still
> > maintain X-10 systems for a living own X-10 specific meters and
analyzers.
> >  From what I was told a long time ago (hence very unreliable!) you need
a
> > scope with digital storage and even then you'd have to count hex to
decode
> > what you were seeing.  Analyzers like the Monterey do all that grunt
work
> > (alas with no easy recordabilty until now for me*) and present a decoded
(or
> > not) human understandable display of what commands were sent and,
depending
> > on the meter, a lot more.  You can read the strength of each bit in a
single
> > frame.  The noise level at different "windows" of the AC cycles, the
> > frequency of that noise, whether the frame you were measuring was the
first
> > frame, the second frame, or a repeater-enhanced second frame.  Why would
you
> > care?  Well, when two transmitters collide, a bit by bit voltage map
will
> > show that and give you a relative idea how far from the meter each
device
> > is.  Meters can detect many other conditions that the best ham radio
> > operator in the world would have to laboriously decode manually.  That's
why
> > the X-10 meter has been invented over and over again in so many
different
> > formats!
> >
> > What I am trying to say is that unless you have some pretty specialized
> > tools in your radio shack, investigating serious X-10 problems isn't
very
> > easy with a scope, even if only you need to drag it to a few different
> > outlets or get 100' long extension cords.
> >
> I agree and I have never brought any big guns into this problem solving.
> I fundamentally say that turning on a noise source causes frequent false
> triggering, with no X-10 traffic, and thus I must either reduce the
> noise or improve the receiver / detector. Deliberate X-10 triggering is
> an entirely different matter, also suffering from severe probability of
> detection versus false alarm rate issues. In this latter case, SNR is
> indeed an issue, and power density per bit, SNR across bits, frames,
> etc. would be meaningful to measure and talk about, but my most severe
> issues were entirely false triggering with no X-10 traffic present. This
> is what prompted my comment regard code design / code length /
> protection bits / etc. in the common situation I experience where random
> lights turned on very often but only when CFLs where pumping out noise.

You realize this is torture for a self-taught X-10 detective.  (-:  Hearing
the gruesome details of a crime but not being able to apply my "forensic"
tool kit to the crime scene makes me twitch.  Actually, you've probably
removed all of the offenders of interest by now, so you've reached a sort of
"move along, there's nothing to see" point.

> >> In the case of my own X-10 EMI as well as the more troublesome
> >> wideband EMI that compromises my shortwave and AM reception, I have
> >> learned to live with it. Even if I am willing to invest the time and
> >> effort and money, my neighbors still create a lot of powerline and near
> >> DC to 20 MHz trash as well.
> > Well, you're clearly out of my league.  (-:  Maybe Jeff will chime in
and
> > talk about all the troublesome installations he's tamed.  I realize
you've
> > taken another path with Ethernet and I believe that some form or
wireless
> > Ethernet home automation solution will dominate the market - the
"highway"
> > is already built and is usually power-failure protected and standalone
(no
> > PC required).  Until X-10 for Ethernet appears, I'm going to stick with
X-10
> > for lights, fans and other non-critical appliances.  For the rest of the
> > stuff, I've got a HomeVision expansion board with relay and sensor chain
> > channels.  Not quite as plug and play as the Ethernet but sufficient to
> > monitor and execute criminal (oops, I meant critical!) functions in the
> > house.  Since Ethernet is workable world-wide, it's going to overtake
any
> > proprietary protocol.  Why build another highway when so many layers of
the
> > OSI network are already built, usually with enormous overcapacity (at
least
> > 1GB nets in the house, anyway)?
> >> I entirely agree that Zigbee has been far too long in coming although
> >> there are some devices out there. Hardly a replacement for X-10 at this
> >> point. And Insteon appears to have gained enough traction and solved
> >> enough problems to be the real contender at this stage.
> > I'm amazed they survived the recession.  Lots of similar "modern living"
> > stores folded during that time.  I've been stranded by companies going
out
> > of business before.  Their proprietary nature gives me pause.  But I
agree,
> > they seem to be the only contender out of many that appeared around the
year
> > 2000, except for hoary old CeBuS (cough) that still has defenders
throughout
> > the world but that never lived up to the hype.
> >
> > Sorry if I offended you.  My proselytizing is better aimed at people who
> > haven't yet converted away from X-10.  Maybe that number is shrinking
> > because a lot of people have disconnected back to ground zero or who
just
> > use a mini-timer to control some lights when they are away
> >
> > --
> > Bobby G.
> >

> Bobby, your comments and suggestions regarding X-10 are very insightful,
> and no offense of any kind is taken. I also hope my comments are not
> seen as offensive in any way. My lack of enthusiasm has mostly to do
> with the timing of any X-10 improvements, which for me would have made
> sense perhaps a year or two ago, but now seem pretty irrelevant. I have
> disconnected and removed many devices, and still own and use a few
> localized X-10 systems where they continue to work reliably.

I totally understand.  The time to involve the XTB is before switching over
to other solutions but I still think if you've got any X-10 running at all,
that you really benefit by boosting the repeated signal from 5 to 25V in
almost every case.  It's sometimes simply being able to "muscle through" the
mire of EMI that wins the day.

While I've never used any of the many firmware features of the XTB-IIR
repeater, I know that Jeff has taken great care to eliminate noise issues
and make the XTB configurable to various problem installations.  In that
respect, his XTBM meter shows both the current noise level and the frequency
of the transmission, noise or not.  That's why I selected it for my CCTV
"channel four" - it gives, in a single screen, information that you have to
wander around the Monterey's many menu options to see.

> > than $20) that is recorded on the fourth channel of my CCTV recorder.
This
> > way I can call up the video and play it in slo mo, reviewing all the
> > commands received in the last week.  I can also see real-time readings
of
> > X-10 from any TV in the house.
> >
> >
> This is a very ingenious and inexpensive alternative to a DSO or logic
> analyzer. What a clever approach!

It only took ten years to come up with it!  I could have done it with the
Monterey much sooner but several things stopped me.  For one, the Monterey
shows less useful information on the screen at one time, and that's a
serious consideration for "televising" the data.  I can't push the Monterey
scroll button when I am looking at the signal display on the downstairs TV.
Also, at $320 for a device that appears out of production (but still in
stock in some places) I wasn't willing to risk the Monterey's existence
leaving it on all the time.  It's still the best portable diagnostic X-10
tool on the market because of all its functions but Jeff's meter is what I
would recommend to anyone but a monomaniac like me.  There have been times
when knowing the exact strength of each bit of the X-10 frame has been
useful in figuring out what was wrong.

As nice as the playback capacity is, I would much rather have a meter that
could log all the X-10 related "stuff" (noise, legit commands, collisions,
fragments, etc) to a text file for search.  I tried fooling around with
OCR's the video but OCR is hinky enough without trying to read characters
from an NTSC source using CCTV resolution.  Oh well.

When the XTBM came out, I convinced Jeff to add a backlight option so that
it would be easily readable via camera and bought one of the first assembled
units.  Since the XTBM is much cheaper and much more easily repaired, I
thought it would be the perfect device to leave on 24x7.  So far, so good.
(-:

Now I have to convince him to build something to "sniff" X-10 RF signals
because on occasion I've been badly tripped up by the little rubber buttons
on the PalmPad series of transmitters sliding under the edge of the button
hole and getting stuck ON.  The missing tool from my X-10 detection kit is
something that could determine where a rogue X-10 RF transmission was coming
from.  Someone recently suggest that Dave Houston's DIY all housecode
transceiver was able to read RF signal strength and could be repurposed as
an X-10 specific RF meter, but it's outside my skillset to modify something
like that to be an RF sniffer.

--
Bobby G.