X10 Community Forum
🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Troubleshooting Automation Problems => Topic started by: HyperionAlpha on December 22, 2015, 06:36:44 PM
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Okay, now I got a weird one. I have a track light that is fed from a switch that is tethered to an outlet. To be clear, I mean outlet -> switch -> track light. The line from the switch to the track light was already wired up with a neutral wire, so it had live, load, and neutral all in place when I came to it.
Putting the WS13A wired to each appropriate connection gives me the following result: nothing. No click, no lights, no flickering, nada. But, if I swap the location of neutral and load, curiously, the WS13A's red LED comes on continuously, with no click when the button is pressed, no power to the track lights, and no flickering. I have a feeling this has something to do with how the switch was fed from the outlet... as it seems that the WS13A thinks it has power on at all times... but only when wired up completely wrongly? Will post up some pics shortly, anybody ever come across one like this before?
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This isn't a three way switch setup is it?
In a three way setup. White can be a Line connection. Should have a black painted mark or tape wrapped around it. If it is.
The Red Neon indicator is on the load output and neutral. If the power is feed into the load and neutral it will glow all the time and the WS13A would not work.
A photo would be a help if you can get one.
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I was in the process of taking some photos of the gang when I discovered the culprit. It turns out the circuit wasn't properly grounded. The ground was from a bare copper wire. The segment from the source was rather short, the segment going to the track was plenty long, and they had lost contact with one another while I was busy sorting the WS13A. I had to use a good stout pair of needlesnose pliers to get them permanently entwined, then back to connecting the WS13A, and the switch now works.
But there is another problem. The switch turns on from my remote, but not off by remote, so I now need to investigate noise sources and placement.
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Ground is for safety and even if missing. If the Line, Load and Neutral are all good. It should have worked.
I am not to familiar with Track Lighting but I believe that some of the contacts in the tracks maybe Line and Neutral power to the light heads.
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Ground is for safety and even if missing. If the Line, Load and Neutral are all good. It should have worked.
I am not to familiar with Track Lighting but I believe that some of the contacts in the tracks maybe Line and Neutral power to the light heads.
I agree - if you fixed it by repairing a broken ground, then you might have a broken neutral somewhere, and/or a neutral that is connected to ground somewhere.
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...and/or a neutral that is connected to ground somewhere.
Good call. In the absence of a good ground, some lazy electricians doing rework also like to bridge neutral to ground with a wire at an outlet or switch. It makes the pretty lights illuminate on a circuit tester showing it's good, but it's just trading one hazard for another. I hope no one has done this in your home.
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Since neutral and ground connect at the panel, how would anyone ever know if they have a neutral to ground connection in a box somewhere? I guess one way would be to disconnect ground or neutral at the panel and test again?
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Since neutral and ground connect at the panel, how would anyone ever know if they have a neutral to ground connection in a box somewhere?
Good point. Without lifting ground at the box, I think it would be difficult. A "Low Ohm" meter might do it at the box level, but these are rare.
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Ground is for safety and even if missing. If the Line, Load and Neutral are all good. It should have worked.
I am not to familiar with Track Lighting but I believe that some of the contacts in the tracks maybe Line and Neutral power to the light heads.
This is interesting, are you saying that you think the reason I can't turn off this WS13A from the remote now may have something to do with why it wasn't working at all before? It does seem like a classic noise problem, it functions and it turns on, but only when a certain other light is not on already, and it does not turn off from the remote, only from the switch.
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That sounds more like a noisy light that you are trying to use with the switch as for why it doesn't turn off. As for turning on, if another light can't be on for it to work that would suggest that it is causing noise issues. But, you already did that debugging and found it wasn't the cause as I recall.
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Yeah, the symptoms seem to be classic noise problems from what I'm reading.
I currently have two lights with WS13A switches, all other lights/lamps/switches are normal.
- #1 WS13A light only responds when two other lights I've identified are off (one is on a regular switch, the other is the one I started this thread to troubleshoot).
- #2 WS13A light only responds with the #1 WS13A mentioned above ^ is off, and it only responds to the On command, and will not turn off except manually. (I need to check this again but I think #2 would not respond to On commands when the third [currently normal] light switch I mentioned is turned on, also.)
They are all LED bulbs. So it seems that #2 interferes with #1, along with another switch, and #2 is interfered with by #1 and the non-x10 #3 switch. Since these are all switched lights, how do I go about eliminating their noise? Something at the panel?
Edit: Something like this (http://www.x10.com/x10-pro/specialty-devices/filters/xpf-20a-wired-in-noise-filter.html), or this (http://www.x10.com/x10-pro/specialty-devices/filters/xpnr-noise-reducer.html)? I see the plug-in filters that would be handy for things like laptop chargers etc. but I guess this stuff needs to go near the switch somehow. I also remember reading about more expensive stuff, like the XTB products... which I've also read performed their jobs of filtering, amplifying, or filtering and amplifying, more reliably. Would I be better off looking into one of those?
It looks like some of these are installed at or near the breaker, others would go at or as near as possible to the offending (noisy) device. This is turning into a slight renovation project. (And I mean that in a good way.)
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The first step is to identify the issue. It appears you have found that the issue is at least 3 lights that cause some kind of noise when turned on. The next step is to determine how to fix the problem. When you have an appliance causing signal issues, the typical solution is a filter where it's plugged in so the device's noise doesn't reach the rest of the electrical system. When the appliance is larger than a plug-in filter can handle (over 15A), you have to go a different route. If the device is over 15A, it is most likely wired in or on a 220V which means you probably need to use the XPF filter (to which you linked) or devise something more complex (amplifiers etc).
In your case, you seem to have light bulbs that cause the issue. If these are fancy enough to warrant it, you could install some kind of inline filter downstream of the switch. However, I can't think of too many bulbs that would be worth the effort rather than finding a bulb that doesn't cause the issue in the first place.
Also, though I may have missed it, did you replace the bulbs with standard incandescent type for testing? If so, did it work correctly? If so, you know it's the bulbs. If not, you would be wasting your time and money with filters as you haven't truly identified the cause of the issue.
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I agree with bkenobi. Before jumping into filters, see if you can identify the noise maker and eliminate it. Try bkenobi's suggestion of trying an incandescent bulb (or bulbs) to see if the problem goes away. If so you could try changing bulb brands before the hassle of wiring in filters. I have dimmable Sylvania brand LEDs being driven by WS467's with out problems. Good luck.
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I did try incandescent halogen bulbs in these track fixtures. It operated the same, no response at all if one of two other lights are on, and no response to Off remote commands even if the other two lights are off. This track is over a kitchen counter top. So I think the next step is to try unplugging the stove, fridge, freezer and see if there is any effect.
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The problem lights where incandescent or 120 volt halogens?
On the switches that when On cause the issues?
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They're halogens, yes, on switches that interfere with the other switch.
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120V halogen or low voltage (DC) halogens? 120VAC halogens are basically just incandescent bulbs and *should not* cause you issues. If they are the low voltage type, then they have a transformer and that could be the issue. You said you switched the bulbs in question to standard incandescent so I'd assume they are 120V, but then you can run a standard incandescent bulb in DC as well.
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Okay clarification, I'm using LEDs here. I still have some 120V halogens however, and used them when testing this problem (and another problematic switch/track, thread elsewhere in this forum). I don't want to use the halogens ultimately, I just popped one in to see if it affected the problem at all. (Which it didn't, so then I tried the lot of halogens, same result.)
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I thought I'd return to this topic as I've had some major work done, and later, solved this issue entirely. In the hope that this will help anyone else in the future, here we go.
First off, the neutral in my breaker box had been compromised. It was exactly as Noam and toasterking suspected, the neutral wires there were well-blackened with voltage spilling over. Wiring had also been split to cover new appliances installed by the previous homeowner without regard to the additional load, another part of this issue. It's actually a good thing that I had started looking at this or it might not have been discovered before a fire broke out. A friend of the family referred a good electrician who completely rewired this work, and installed a brand new breaker box and breaker switches. I also took the opportunity to install the XPCR active repeater, and I got a pair of Jeff Volp's XTB ANR noise filters as well. (I didn't install a PZZ01 at the time however, perhaps that would've been a good idea also. Oops.)
Wouldn't you know it, after all this work, this particular track light and WS13A were still not working. I could see the XPCR doing its job, as lights that didn't survive the jump were now working without me turning my stove on. But the XTB ANR filters each had a semi-continuous blinking going on, which only happened when certain lights were turned on. The two biggest culprits turned out to be the two track lights in the kitchen. The noise the XTB ANR filters were showing at their LEDs were on/near the 120KHz frequency that X10 uses, and went away when these two lights were turned off. I contacted Jeff for some insight. He replied that any time you find a light turning on remotely, but not turning off remotely, this is almost always due to the same light injecting its own noise back into the power line. Sometimes, this is due to the bulbs (and likely, if they are CFL or LED), but I'd already eliminated that here. So it seemed to be more due to the fixture than the bulbs, because the same bulbs were not-noisy in other locations in the house, and even the Halogen bulbs were noisy in these fixtures. The answer: the Leviton 6287. At only 5A, this filter does the same work as the 20A X10 XPF filter, but the most important part is that it is tiny, whereas the XPF is physically huge. I was able to install the Leviton 6287 inside the track light fixtures, and like magic, both of these lights no longer interfere with other lights in the house, and always turn off remotely. With everything stable now I can tackle the really fun stuff, setting up a server for scene controls, timers, etc.
Okay maybe I used the word "filter" too indiscriminately to describe the XTB ANR, it is in fact more of a noise reducer/signal booster and less of a filter. Also, I have no explanation for why the fixtures were noisy, when I removed their covers to install the 6287, I found nothing but wires nutted together and ground, no real hardware to speak of was up in there. But I guess I don't care too much when the 6287 solved all problems. It seems to me there is a need for the 6287 that isn't easily found without the 6287, and that's problematic when they are no longer made.
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Thank you for sharing your findings.
Glad the bad Neutral connections didn't result in more serious things.
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Where did you source the Leviton 6287? I've looked for small inline filters like these and all seem to be discontinued.
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Where did you source the Leviton 6287? I've looked for small inline filters like these and all seem to be discontinued.
http://forums.x10.com/index.php?topic=29082.0
Jeff
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I forgot you said you had some.
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A retailer at amazon had some, they were available with amazon prime shipping so I had no charge. That vendor has just sold out after I bought five of his stock!