Hi.
I am a first-time homeowner who after a few weeks has finally begun to figure out what the previous owners did to automate the home. It's an old house with wires running absolutely everywhere in the basement (if you know a good low-voltage guy in CT who does painstaking work and will respect 80-year-old woodwork and plaster-and-lath walls and ceilings, please PM me so I can engage him when I someday have the money to spend) so it's not as straightforward as one might think. Anyway, I have a practical question and a theoretical question:
1. I have a dead Leviton 16400. I know it's dead because the LED won't light up and it shows signs of corrosion and water damage. I thought from my background reading that the easiest thing to do would to buy another 16400, set the dials/DIPs/whatever so that they were identical to the outgoing switch/transmitter, and cross my fingers that whatever it controlled (I don't know what it controls, by the way-- some exterior lights, maybe?) would work again. The 16400 seems to be just about impossible to source so I wonder if there's a simple plug-and-play alternative. Any suggestions?
2. I am trying to figure out how the system works. The X10 switches in the house that "work" presently seem to trigger different relays (there are boxes in the basement that go "thunk" when a switch is actuated-- they're everywhere-- and I don't know which box drives which light and where they are all hidden and there is no documentation) in the basement. So are they just sending a code/signal to a receiver that opens or closes a separate circuit? And if I am lucky all I have to do is give the switches/receivers the correct signal and they'll work as they were intended?
Thanks for indulging this over-his-head amateur.
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Topic: Drop-in replacement for Leviton 16400 and add'l questions (Read 1635 times)