Zick

Yup, had wife move branch connection around and didn't see any change. Going to solder up the connections and call it good. It's been about 3 days with the other keypadlinc in place and no sign of fault yet.

When I did this test, I got .6 ohms.

Sometimes you have to get creative. I have not needed to do this often, but I have sometimes tied hot and neutral together (obviously, no power) at at one termination point (box or panel) and measured resistance between hot and neutral conductors at the other end. Other times, I might add a length of conductor between one location and another so that I could reach both ends with the probes. Yes! Nice. Yellow identifies the circuit(s) powering only insteon switches. No lights. No refrigerators. I would imagine that you could even power a whole house' worth of unloaded insteon switches from a single circuit breaker. Yellow, then, becomes partly a control circuit. Sometimes, even electricians have good ideas. Thank you for that idea of tying the wires together. It's seems so obvious now, which is why I probably didn't think of it.

The only knowledge I have of this would be part of the keypad literature. I think it is typically +/-10%, but you can check. My suspicion is that if your issues are connector related, it would be more about transient and intermittent conditions rather than just pure peak voltages. My suspicion, further, is that the conditions at your house are simply revealing some weakness (rather, lack of robustness) in the keypad design. Others have pointed to posts about similar problems and persistent failures, but I suspect a vast majority experience very limited and random failures. I take this as an indication that some houses have minor wiring issues that don't bother most electrical devices, but could affect those electronic devices designed without a lot of margin. Perhaps smarthome devices are one of the latter (pure speculation based on your experience here). Depending on how much work you want to put into this, and how comfortable you are with electrical, one option is to measure resistance between the switch location hot, and the circuit breaker. If possible, measure this resistance while moving the branch connector. My experience is that this resistance will be well below 1 ohm. Heed LeeGs advice here with regards to being careful. I also don't know why your electrician used yellow, but I understand that this is code compliant. Most of us are used to black and red because of this being the common colors in sheathed electrical cable, but I don't believe yellow is a restricted color (like white or green). Red, blue, black, yellow, orange, and red are, I believe, ungrounded conductors by code. That is how I would do it, being sure to make sure everything is cleaned and flux is applied. One thing I have found about wire nuts is that they work best when the wirenut threads engage EVERY conductor. With 4+ conductors, this can sometimes be tricky. Ok, I was just checking on the voltage changes because we have a Geothermal unit that causes the lights to dim slightly when it kicks on. I had checked with our Electric Comp and they said the voltage drop was within spec. Here is what he said exactly; As far as checking the resistance between the wall switch hot and breaker, I have no problems trying this but how can I measure this when the distance between the two locations is about 50+ feet away? Also, I think I remember why the reason for the yellow wire. It is actually only on Insteon devices around the house since the switches are completely separate from any electrical outlet and the outlets have the normal red/black color scheme.

Hi Lee, That was actually one of the first things I did was to check all the neutral and ground screws on the bus bars. I found some that were about 1/4 to 1/2 turn from being really snugged down tight.

Have you asked him? No I haven't yet, but does it really matter if he used Yellow instead of Red?

Hi oberkc, The hot wires that branch out are in fact tied together by a wire nut and "appeared" to be a good connection. I suppose I could solder them together althought I'm not sure what method would be the best which this many wires coming together? Should I just leave the wires twisted and solder them up as it, kind of like this? You mentioned voltage changes (drop/increase). Just how much change in voltage would be acceptable and not to cause any damage?

The other thing that is strange and leads me to believe it might be defective keypadlincs is that I have multiple Switchlincs connected to the same circuit and none of those have experienced any issues. All the keypadlincs are V5.0. These all could have been possible "defective" for a while now because the only time the problem shows up is when the power is removed and readded such as a power outage (which usually don't happen much or when I'm not around). Then after a while they go back to normal or at least most did. I don't appear to be the only one with this issue; http://www.smarthome.com/FORUM/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9145 http://www.smarthome.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8997 http://www.smarthome.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9388

This is how it's setup. Thanks for the information.

Well I took a chance and put yet another good keypadlinc into that spot and so far nothing has happened. But I've now have a total of 5 that are shorting out. One that is completely toast and 4 others that short out for a while but then stabilze. This is not looking good for only 2 1/2 years in operation.

So I should be OK, because my neutrals don't branch out to different circuits. All wall boxes are home run conduits and don't tie into other conduits. There is a lot of conduit here The hot wire is basically the same except that they all tie together right before connecting to the single breaker.

Sorry, I don't have this problem on my HTC Desire. But I do notice that when the screen first loads, the on/off buttons shift around a bit but then go where they're suppose to. I have always used Conductor.

Some info I found, maybe relevant or maybe not. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=790713

Ok, I'm going to take a step back here a second because after thinking about this again and doing some reading I might be wrong about the neutrals being on the same phase. My understanding was that the hot wire would make the difference for the phase depending on which leg the breaker was connected to. I was thinking that since all the neutrals wired into the neutral bus bar that they would be the same but maybe I'm mistaken. Can someone explain how I can 100% verify if my neutral are in fact on the same phase? Thanks

I have actually done this already but I was using the two keypadlinc that were experiencing the issue. I'm hesitent to put a known good one in that location but afraid I might have to... Hello Zick, It is possible for line voltage to be very rapidly changing, faster than the response time of your meter. An oscilloscope or a fast recording meter are required to determine that. Since you have a test cord would it be possible to try this in a neighbors house or at work? This might help you isolate/identify your power quality as the possible issue. I am curious about the yellow (hot) wire. Yellow seem unusual, unless it might be associated with a uninterruptible power source? I am using a Fluke 88-5 to take the readings although not as useful as an oscilloscope might be for this test. I can try and take the possibly damaged keypadlincs to another location to test. But if their already damaged, then they would act the same way at the other location I would think. Also, I don't know the exact reason for using the yellow wire. My FIL who is a Electrical Engineer did all of our wiring.

Just to try and keep everyone on the same page. The neutrals are in fact on the same phase. Each wall switch has a dedicated line that runs straight to the service panel and wired into the neutral bus bar. The Yellow (hot) are also all on the same phase. Eash wall switch has a dedicated line that runs straight to the service panel but right before it goes into a breaker, the multiple yellow wires are tied together and from that wire nut a single wire goes into the breaker. And yes Teken, I would be the same on GJ. Remember, the one with the indoor pond and cabinet full of insteon switches.

That would be correct. So is this OK or no? I'd really like to hammer out this issue before I decide on buying new switches. Don't want to buy anything until I know they are not going to get damaged.

That would be correct.

Each wall switch has two wires consisting of a Yellow hot and White neutral pulled from the mechnical room. Each neutral wire go straight to the neutral bus bar in the service panel. But the Yellow hot wires that going into the mech room are tied together, then from that bunch is a singe wire that goes into the single breaker.

That's just it, these wall switches don't go to any one particular switch in the mechanical room. They just have straight line voltage and I have to program them to whichever switch in the mech room I want to control. This keypadlinc was programmed to about 6 different Switchlincs in the mechinal room. Those controlled different circuits of lights that were mostly can lights and a track light. All are dimmable loads as well as the switchlincs.

Update; Not so good, might be something w/ the wiring or else I have more keypadlinc's failing.... I was able to track down all the wiring. The neutral wire was a direct line to the service panel and everything looked good there. I found some articles about testing the neutral line and how your suppose to have under 10 Ohm. I was getting ~3 Ohms. tested Hot to Neutral = 124.1 volts tested Hot to Ground = 124.1 volts tested Neutral to Ground = 0 volts This all looks good from what I can tell. I connected a 65 watt bulb to the circuit and had no problems lighting and the voltage reading w/ the load was 123.9 volts. Now here is where it starts to get weird. I found that the Hot wire is tied into about 6 other Hot wires before going to the breaker. Those other Hot wires go to other wall switches around the house (about 18 in total between Switchlincs and Keypadlincs). While locating the other switches on the same circuit, I found two other keypadlincs acting the exact same way but not as bad. But I was still able to control scenes with them. They would flicker on/off and make the same arcing sound. I tried moving the circuit to a different breaker but the problem was still happening. I disconnected the other Hot wires so that there was only one going to the breaker. I tried out the two previous bad keypadlincs that weren't working. The original keypadlinc still would not work. But the second one starting shorting out again as soon as I connected it but if I left it connected for a few minutes, it went back to normal and started working again. I was able to turn on/off lights with it. Even stranger... if I disconnect the keypadlinc and reconnect it, it will start the cycle all over again. It starts shorting out for a couple minutes but then goes normal.

I have a make shift cord that I can put in different ends (outlets, sockets, etc), I will connect it up to the box with an incandescent bulb and see what happens. I won't get to try this until I get home from work thought. Thanks for the help so far guys!

Gatchel, no the white wire is purely neutral. I get between 123-124 volts when reading both the yellow and white. Lee, if this was a power source issue why wouldn't the other two switches be effected? Plus these have been in place for over 2 years.

Ok, that I understood. Our entire house was done in conduit and pretty much everything was a home run back to the mech room. There are only the two wires coming into that box (Yellow(hot) & White(Neutral)), except for a passing pair of yellow wires going to our doorbell. The neutral & hot wire should be a direct line to the panels and nothing else should be tied into it. Now I'm no electrician but doesn’t all white wires get tied together in the panel on the neutral bus bar?

Here is a shot of the wall setup.