X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Troubleshooting Automation Problems => Topic started by: HeySuburbia on May 02, 2011, 01:48:56 PM

Title: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: HeySuburbia on May 02, 2011, 01:48:56 PM
I'm just getting into X10 and the first thing I wanted to do was to just set my two outside lights to turn on at a certain time each night and turn off each morning.

Right now I just have a Socket Rocket (LM15A) in each light and a MiniTimer to control them with. I got everything set up fine and can control both lights from the on and off buttons on the MiniTimer, but for some reason even though I have it set to turn them on each night it never turns them on. If I turn them on manually it will still turn them off fine in the morning though. One of them even shows that it's on when it's supposed to be on (although it isn't), but the other never even shows that it's on. I'm 100% sure that I've set the on/off times correctly and even double and triple checked to make sure that I did.

Any suggestions?
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: dave w on May 02, 2011, 02:51:20 PM
One of them even shows that it's on when it's supposed to be on (although it isn't), but the other never even shows that it's on. I'm 100% sure that I've set the on/off times correctly and even double and triple checked to make sure that I did.
Where does that show?

If you can reliably and repeatedly manually control the lights from the Mini Timer near the times the lights would be turned on automatically, then it sounds like a Mini Timer problem.

Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: Brian H on May 02, 2011, 03:39:46 PM
Is it a MT13A or MT12A MiniTimer?
Model number may help us in finding the answer.
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: HeySuburbia on May 02, 2011, 05:39:46 PM
One of them even shows that it's on when it's supposed to be on (although it isn't), but the other never even shows that it's on. I'm 100% sure that I've set the on/off times correctly and even double and triple checked to make sure that I did.
Where does that show?

If you can reliably and repeatedly manually control the lights from the Mini Timer near the times the lights would be turned on automatically, then it sounds like a Mini Timer problem.



It shows on the MiniTimer that it's on. Everything else works perfect except for the lights not turning on when they're set to turn on.

Is it a MT13A or MT12A MiniTimer?
Model number may help us in finding the answer.

It's the MT13A
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: Brian H on May 02, 2011, 06:12:42 PM
So you can control the lights with the manual buttons.
At the preset On time. The MT13A shows it sent the On signal but the lights did not light and the preset Off times do work.

Well you may want to triple check your On settings but it almost sounds like a MT13A problem.
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: HeySuburbia on May 02, 2011, 06:27:54 PM
So you can control the lights with the manual buttons.
At the preset On time. The MT13A shows it sent the On signal but the lights did not light and the preset Off times do work.

Well you may want to triple check your On settings but it almost sounds like a MT13A problem.


Yep, this describes it exactly, except the MT13A only shows that it sent the on signal to one of the lights.
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: Brian H on May 02, 2011, 07:22:31 PM
Are the times in both the 1-4 and 5-8 rows?
I found on my test MT13A that the on and off status only show for the row the 1-4/5-8 switch is set to.
Like if I send C1 On and C5 On from a timer. The only C1 or C5 shows depending on the switch position. Even though both commands went out.

I am going to play with mine more as I found it very confusing to get the programming correct and not change it when reviewing the settings.

Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: Dan Lawrence on May 02, 2011, 08:32:30 PM
Here are the timers for our electric blanket:  Turn ON at 9:00 PM OFF at 8:00 AM WEEKDAYS
and Turn ON at 9:00 PM OFF at 9:00 AM WEEKENDS

They work FLAWLESSLY and have since 1994 when ActiveHome came along.  When ActiveHome Pro arrived, all modules were successfully imported. 
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: dave w on May 02, 2011, 09:24:48 PM
 ???
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: Brian H on May 03, 2011, 06:11:13 AM
Dan; Since when does a MT13A Mini Timer run AHP?
Title: Re: Problem With Automatic on/off Timer
Post by: HeySuburbia on May 03, 2011, 01:22:04 PM
Are the times in both the 1-4 and 5-8 rows?
I found on my test MT13A that the on and off status only show for the row the 1-4/5-8 switch is set to.
Like if I send C1 On and C5 On from a timer. The only C1 or C5 shows depending on the switch position. Even though both commands went out.

I am going to play with mine more as I found it very confusing to get the programming correct and not change it when reviewing the settings.



They were both in the 1 - 4 row. I just figured that I somehow programmed them wrong, but with the MiniTimer showing that they were on I knew that wasn't the problem. I'm actually ordering some more stuff right now, so maybe I'll just pick up another MiniTimer and just see if using that one fixes the problem.

Thanks for your help guys!