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[kamiller42]

I am hoping the electricity whizzes can help me with this.

Given:
3 recessed CFL lights.
1 XPS3 & 1 XPSS

Following tests performed:
1. Press XPSS, XPS3 relay does rapid on/off cycle. Does not remain on.
2. Press & hold XPSS, XPS3 lights remain lit.
3. Press XPS3, nothing.
4, Remove all 3 light bulbs & press XPSS, XPS3 relay clicks on and stays on. Press again, XPS3 turns off. Press XPS3, nothing... ever.
5. With 3 bulbs out and XPS3 on, I screw in a bulb. Bulb shows very small flicker but never powers on. XPS3 remains on.

That's the easy part. I have swapped both switches with known working switches with same results. The old switches work fine in another 3 way application.

What is bugging me is this installation used to work. What should I check with wiring? What are the possible causes?

[Brian H]

Did you happen to swap the bulbs from incandescent to CFL when the problems started?
If you did. They may have never been wired right and the incandescent bulbs where providing some path back to the AC Line that a  CFL can't do.

If you substitute some incandescent bulbs to aid in troubleshooting. Does anything change?

[kamiller42]

Hi Brian. I never had incandescent bulbs installed. I tested the fixtures using incandescent bulbs. They do the same as the CFLs, specifically...
1. Press XPSS, XPS3 relay does rapid on/off cycle. Does not remain on.
2. Press & hold XPSS, XPS3 lights remain lit.
3. Press XPS3, nothing.

[Dan Lawrence]

"XPSS Slave Switch has no load bearing capacity and only operates
in conjunction with the XPS3 20A Master, XPDI3 Inductive Dimmer
or the XPD3 Incandescent Dimmer Switches."

Are your  XPS3/XPSS (WS13a/WS14) wired correctly?  Seems likely they are not.

[kamiller42]

"Are your  XPS3/XPSS (WS13a/WS14) wired correctly?  Seems likely they are not. "

I've installed a couple of these combos with no problem. And this one, unless my memory is failing, used to work.

Your suspicion is mine too. I keep wanting to say there is a wiring problem. (My #1 suspicion is a neutral gone bad.) I keep looking things over and see no logical reason for things not to work. It's maddening.

Here's a description of the electrical setup. At the top of some stairs are three switches: one for hall light, one for the 3 recessed lights at the top of the stairs, and a third for the stair lights. The hall light and stair lights also have switches at the bottom of the stairs. The way the electricians ran the wires is to run all power to the three switches and have the loads at the remote switches. The hall light is currently configured with a WS13a/WS14 and working fine.

What I am hoping is someone recognizes these symptoms and suggests wiring to check. Something like "An open on the neutral would cause that." If not that, maybe some measurements I could take. I could swap the WS13/WS14 positions, but I don't really see that working.

[evadorev]

if i read your last post correctly, the loads are on the remotes switches boxes. That shouldn`t be there.

If you read the leaflet that comes with the switches, the only way to wire it to make it works is to have the line and load on the same box because you need ALL 3 wires to hook up your remote correctly.

The 3-way setup you have use the white wire to supply neutral to your lights and you need the white wire to act as a traveller in the leaflet. You also need to power the main switches trough the remotes (main switch black wire should be connected to the  black traveller wire coming from the remote )


 It will work if you use ordinary switches but in an X10 setup, you need to have the white wire to act as a traveller, that`s your bug.

The only way to make it works is to rewire the loads to put it on the main switches boxes instead of the remotes ones.

Hope it will help

Sorry for the answer, but it`s the only way, i think, to make it works. 

[Noam]

I'm not sure if that's true.
With "standard" 3-way switches, there should be three wires going between the two boxes, used for the two travelers, (usually Black and Red - one at a time is HOT), plus the neutral wire. At the remote box, the switch connects one or the other traveler to the Black wire going to the load.

Therefore, you should be able to hook it up this way:

Wires coming OUT of the Local box:
Black: Hot
White: Neutral
Red: Traveller

[evadorev]

i suggest noam and you to go to this site and see how to hook up 3-way switches:

BTW reading the leaflets will help too
 
http://www.homeimprovementweb.com/information/how-to/three-way-switch-option5.htm

 in this case it`s the load (blue wire) should be returned to the light and you don`t have the wires to do that.

If you do it this way with X10 Installation , you always miss a wire (the load or the neutral).

hope it will help

[Noam]

i suggest noam and you to go to this site and see how to hook up 3-way switches:

BTW reading the leaflets will help too
 
http://www.homeimprovementweb.com/information/how-to/three-way-switch-option5.htm

 in this case it`s the load (blue wire) should be returned to the light and you don`t have the wires to do that.

If you do it this way with X10 Installation , you always miss a wire (the load or the neutral).

hope it will help

With all due respect, I do know how to wire up 3-way switches. However, X10 (or other "special" switches) sometimes have unusual wiring setups.
I've never set up any of the X10 3-way switches, but I did install a smarthome set a few years ago. I found that with my smarthome switches, and it looks the same with the X10 one from the instructions, that the "Remote" switch should be in the "Local" box, and the "Master" switch should go closer to the load.
There are only two wires connecting between the two switches. the third wire in the cable is the neutral.

[dave w]

FWIW
As far as the the X10 switches that do not require a neutral, It really should not matter (much) whether the master is on the load side or the line side of a three way. The exception is a brach with low X10 signal strength or noise. In that situation tying the master's Black wire to the line or hot may provide a stronger signal to the switch.

http://software.x10.com/pub/manuals/ws12a-14a-is.pdf

http://www.x10pro.com/pro/pdf/plw02.pdf

[evadorev]

I re re re read the leaflet and in the way kamiller said in the first time, it should work. I agree with you that`s a neutral problem to the master.

Just check all the connections.

Sorry for everything   

[kamiller42]

Ok gentlemen. Thanks for your patience. My attention was pulled elsewhere, and I wanted to have some pictures the next time I came back to this thread. Now I do.

In this image, I tagged the wires with incoming power with green dots. You can see all of the switches getting their power from that wad with the red cap. The blue dot wires go to the remote end.


This is a shot of the remote end. One of the cables is coming from the master switch and the other to the light.


If you need a different view, let me know and I will take a picture. Does these help illuminate the problem?

[Noam]

Thanks for the pictures.
It is a little hard to tell from the picture which wire is going into which terminal on the two switches.
Can you tell us which wire is going into which terminal at each end, and what the terminals are marked?
Also, which unit is at which end of the setup currently?

[evadorev]

if i compare your pictures with this diagram:  http://software.x10.com/pub/manuals/ws13a-ws14a-is.pdf

I can see your master on the remote box and the slave on the main box and the unscrewed switches are the ones that we talk about. is that correct ??

If it so, i think one of the traveler is missing on the slave switch. the red one who comes from the master and wired to the control terminal.

I agree with NOAM, that is hard to see and with a map of the wiring, it will be easier 

[kamiller42]

The upper picture is the slave/companion switch. It's the center in the middle, not the one on the right. That's the switch for the stairs, and it works fine. The traveler for the companion is not screwed in. I unscrewed it earlier. Problem exists even if it is screwed in.

The master is the lower picture, aka the remote end. You can see the red traveler. The picture below gives another look at the setup.



The green dot is the live wire coming from the companion switch. The blue wire is going to the light. The electrician wrapped its wire around the live wire. You can see the coil in the pic. The red and white wires are obvious. The pink dot wire is ground. It goes nowhere.

The wiring for the companion switch is in the other picture. The green dot wire is live power from the electric co. The blue dot one is going to the master switch on the remote end. Both are screwed into the live bus. Lastly, the red wire is screwed into the top position, but isn't in the picture. If it was, it would look like the switch on the right.