X10 Community Forum
🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Troubleshooting Automation Problems => Topic started by: Marauder2003 on April 09, 2013, 05:16:47 PM
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My system:
1 MA16A motion sensor
1 WS4777-C 3-way wall switches (front)
1 WS4777-C 3-way wall switches (back)
1 WS4777-C 3-way wall switches (garage)
1 RR501 transceiver
1 MT10A timer
WS4777-C (front)and the RR501 are within 15 feet of the MA16A. Sometimes when motion is detected only the front turns on. And the RR501 does not trigger. Other times all works fine and all the lights turn on.
Most times when using the MT10A to turn off all lights the back lights don't turn off. I have to use the WS4777-C directly.
I have had a smart meter for over a year now and this problem is recent. I recently had some kind of storm strike.
I lost my Verizon DVR, Verizon router and my PC motherboard. Could this have messed with the X10 hardware?
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If everything has worked for the year you had the Smartmeter, as you insinuate, you probably have a new noise source. Search the forum for "noise" as there are one or two other posts on the subject...or go here.
http://jvde.us/x10_troubleshooting.htm
http://www.act-remote.com/PCC/uncle.htm
http://www.davehouston.net/noise.htm
What do you mean by: "Sometimes when motion is detected only the front turns on. And the RR501 does not trigger."
The RR501 will only "clunk" and activate it's built in outlet when it receives a Unit Code one or nine (depending on slide switch setting) on it's set House Code, but it transceives to powerline any of the 16 Unit Codes.
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Do you have any phase coupling between the two phases of the home?
Have you added moved or changed anything with electronics in them?
dave w gave you the links to some troubleshooting and good information sites.
Could be a device slowly deteriorating due to a lighting spike on the power lines. Have you tried unplugging things and then testing for different results?
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Sometimes the front lights are on and none of the others are. Since I did not hit the button to turn the fronts on 1 of 2 things happened. The motion detector 'saw' motion, sent a signal but only the front lights paid attention. And somehow the RR501 did not itself trigger.
Or some kind of spurious signal caused the front to turn on but the others did not.
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Which smartmeter and where do you live? Echelon meters used by Duke Energy in the Cincinnati area have a feature whereby the meter increases the amplitude of its PLC signals significantly in response to perceived noise (e.g. X10 PLC signals). X10 wall switches appear particularly susceptible to random activation by these smartmeters in this geographical region. In other Duke regions, they appear to use Zigbee which does not give X10 problems.
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Sometimes the front lights are on and none of the others are. Since I did not hit the button to turn the fronts on 1 of 2 things happened. The motion detector 'saw' motion, sent a signal but only the front lights paid attention. And somehow the RR501 did not itself trigger.
Or some kind of spurious signal caused the front to turn on but the others did not.
When you begin troubleshooting your noise or phase coupling problem or possibly Smartmeter problem, it will be helpful to understand how X10 works.
The X10 wall switches, Appliance Modules, and Lamp Modules receive their commands from the powerline, not RF or wirelessly. When the motion sensor sends a RF command, it is the RR501 that picks up the RF command and transceives it to the powerline for the wall switches to act on. So still not sure what you mean by "And somehow the RR501 did not itself trigger." Unless the motion sensor has a Unit Code of 1 or 9 the RR501 won't make a peep but it appears to be transceiving properly. Plug the Mini Timer in to same outlet as the RR501 and turn the lights ON with the Mini Timer. If the same light comes on, and the others remain off as they have before, you likely have a noise or coupling problem between that outlet and the circuits the other lights are on.