X10 Community Forum

🖥️ActiveHome Pro => ActiveHome Pro General => Help & Troubleshooting => Topic started by: LudeSH01 on December 01, 2009, 05:00:04 PM

Title: Dimmable Fluorescent lights with wall switch... doesnt receive commands
Post by: LudeSH01 on December 01, 2009, 05:00:04 PM
I was unfortunate to have fixtures with all cfl bulbs, so i replaced quite a few with dimmable fluorescents which work great on the dimmer switches,  I had one of the dimmers working properly (receiving commands from x10 transceivers) but wasnt the decorative style, so i used a decorative style switch, same wiring and everything, dimmer worked but none of the commands from any source worked, then tried the same switch that worked before and now it wont work, could this be a polarity issue? even though both switches were wired the same way? So I got creative and took apart a decorative style switch and combined it with the normal push button switch (the one that worked) which is what comes behind the designer switch anyway, finally got it together and wired it up, again the dimmer works great with the dimmable fluorescents, just will not receive any commands from any transceiver... hopefully someone has come across this before or someone with more experience with these applications can help me out with this problem.  any thoughts??
Title: Re: Dimmable Fluorescent lights with wall switch... doesnt receive commands
Post by: Brian H on December 01, 2009, 06:30:45 PM
If the wall switch is a two wire one. That gets it power through the load.
No CFL; dimable or not; should be used with it.
If it controls more than one bulb. Sometimes leaving one incandescent bulb and the rest CFL will work.
Most likely the CFL is generating noise; that is masking the X10 signals and even when off a small amount of current is flowing through the bulbs. There maybe some noise all the time. Some also have noise suppression capacitors that can suck up X10 signals.