Interesting X-10 to ISY installation

[SteveL]

I went out to a dealer’s project in a house that he has been working on in Malibu, CA. He has installed an ISY-26 along with an existing HAI system and INSTEON installation. He was using the HAI X-10 triggers to turn on INSTEON scenes and devices from the touch screen using the ISY as the gateway. Everything in the house worked fine for a week and then stopped completely and now the home owner was talking about talking it all out.

The dealer gave me a call and I went out to see if I could help.

Here is what I found…..I took an X-10 Maxi controller and plugged it into the same outlet as the X-10 interface (X-10 PL513) on the HAI. I sent signals from the controller and was looking for the red light to blink showing me that signal is being seen on the interface...No respons. I then went to the HAI program direct and sent commands to the X-10 interface direct from the board to the interface and still no blinking. I went around the house and took the interface and Maxi controller ( ControLinc Maxi #4071)

and tried it in various outlets with the same results. I then took a plug strip and put a filter on it and pluggeg the Maxi controller and the X-10 interface into the plug strip together.....I saw signal

Now I new the two devices were as least working. I brought the same setup to the garage and found all the outlets had the same communication problem. Keep in mind I wasn’t trying to send signal from one end of the house through the other, just within the same outlet. I’m now in the garage and the next step is to find the interference. So with Maxi controller in hand and the interface plugged into the same outlet in the garage where signal is also bad, the dealer and I went and turned off each breaker on at a time.

Every time a breaker went off I tried to send a signal from the Maxi to the X-10 interface and looking for it to blink showing that it saw signal. Half way through the second panel we found I signal pole breaker feeding a AC fan unit in the attic that had a low voltage power supply that was sending out a tremendous amount of noise.

We put a filter on it as a quick fix and every thing was working great. Through all of this the INSTEON network did not stop talking, only the X-10 portion of the equation was seeing this problem.

I wanted to share this to show that the problem is not always obvious like the HAI board is bad or the interface is broken or the ISY is not sending the commands. I had never seen noise this bad to where a X-10 controller plugged into the same outlet as the interface in so many places in the house did not communicate at all. Tracking this down took about a half hour.

 

SteveL

[MikeB]

Hey Steve -

 

Great story!

 

Wonder why the power supply suddenly started dumping so much noise? Do you find that is sometimes a sign that the power supply is failing?

[SteveL]

Mike,

Sometimes it means it is going out, though I have seem them work for years this way. The other three units had no problem, though I did put a filter on all of them just in case. It was nice meeting you at EHX.

 

SteveL

[Sub-Routine]

...

... Through all of this the INSTEON network did not stop talking, only the X-10 portion of the equation was seeing this problem.

...

 

SteveL

 

Good one!

 

Rand