X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Troubleshooting Automation Problems => Topic started by: volkhard on January 04, 2012, 09:27:41 AM

Title: newbie needs help: slimline remote wallswitch
Post by: volkhard on January 04, 2012, 09:27:41 AM

I am new to this forum and new to home automation. I thought it would be easy to do a little project in my house. Using the slimline remote wall switches, wireless transceiver and appliances modules it should have been a plug 'n play 5 minute job.
I programmed the switches and they work without problems toward the transceiver and the appliances modules. But as soon as I place the switch close to a wall or a piece of furniture, they stop working. It's like the proximity of an solid object sucks all the transmitting power
I have a total of 6 of these slimline switches and they all act the same. They also loose their settings due to the proximity to a solid object and I have to set the codes again to make them work as long as I am staying away from solid objects. The effect takes place when I am about an inch or closer to any solid object.

I tried to find some info on this forum about this issue but haven't seen anything covering that topic (or I used the wrong topics in my search).

My furniture will be delivered soon and the idea was to have these switches close to the door and at the nightstands, of course attached to these solid objects :'

Any one having any idea what's going on?

Thanks for any help.

Title: Re: newbie needs help: slimline remote wallswitch
Post by: Brian H on January 04, 2012, 11:26:01 AM

You may want to try a passive antenna as shown in the following link.
http://www.davehouston.net/X10_feng_shui.htm

Title: Re: newbie needs help: slimline remote wallswitch
Post by: volkhard on January 04, 2012, 01:51:01 PM

Thanks for the link.
This might be something to get the transmitter work better, but for a real world application, where you want to have the slimline switch visible placed on a wall or a pice of furniture in a decent home enviroment, this approach doesn't fit the bill. If that is a know issue, this remote switch does not perform as advertised and should not be distributed in the first place.I have the transceiver within 4 feet of the switch in the same room and it still doesn't perform. This was my first approach at X10 for home automation and it is disappointing and seems not really a serious line of products.

Unless their are other working solutions to make these things perform, I just feel like a sucker who fell for the advertisement and paid good dollars for unusable items :(

Title: Re: newbie needs help: slimline remote wallswitch
Post by: Noam on January 04, 2012, 02:21:30 PM

You might want to check the battery in the switch, it might be weak. You never know how long the switch may have sat around in the X10 warehouse for too long before it was purchased and shipped out to you.

Keep in mind that you probably will have to re-program the switch after replacing the battery.

Title: Re: newbie needs help: slimline remote wallswitch
Post by: Brian H on January 04, 2012, 02:40:48 PM

Mounting them should not make them loose their programming.
You may want to make sure the batteries are good as Noam mentioned.