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[medvampire]

I'm thinking of trying a "Smart" repeater in the attic to get the best of both worlds

Have one and it didn't work too well. I ended up just doing the external antenna mod and I have great results. If you are having RF problems it seems the best way to go.
Steve

[glt]

Ditto on the repeater - seems to foul things up more than it helps.

Might be useful if you have a motion dectector REALLY far from your house. Even more useful if you could select it to only work on selected house codes (like the one for that motion detector.)

I never heard of the repeater until the CM 15a - wonder why?

Choices:

A. Live w/ the CM15a

B. Mod the CM15a's antenna.

C. Get a WGL 572 ( http://www.wgldesigns.com/ )

D. Get a REAL program ( for lots of bucks) and use the WGL 800.

E. Listen to your wife and spend the money on a new couch. How hard is it to flip a switch? Yeah! Fun!

F.  Go w/ SH's insteon and replace your switches monthly.

G. Go w/ UPB powerline protocal (read rich).

H. Buy a "smart" repeater.

GLT

For me it's inexpensive X10 untill somebody PROVES they are better and/or one of the members here shares their lottery winings with us.

[ArtClark]

I think I got a bad massage across, somehow.  In no way am I complaining about range or X-10.  With the RF in the basement I get very good results throughout the house.  (Little note:  Pulled unused repeater out of box, stuck in attic, tried out in garage and it does bring the garage signals into the house and CM15A quite nicely.)  My confusion was really why the in-house items seem (DO!) to work better the lower they are.  I have tried many antenna placements, all the way to the point of re-orienting the plug that the CM15A is located in.  This was simple in attic and basement cause the box was external so I could remove from wall joist and mount how I wanted.  The antenna position makes a difference, but not as great a difference as the height of the unit.

Strangely, I seen to get the best receive distance with the antenna vertical, but when using the transmit (Which is rare, I'll admit) the best range seems to be horizontal.  Actually a little off horizontal....   Seeing that most of what I want the CM15 to do is receive, I leave the antenna almost vertical.

The "Smart" repeater is great for Normal signals, but seems to ignore security signals.  The keyfobs, sensors and security motion sensors seem to be ignored by it.  (Has the "receive" LED and "Transmit" LED).  So now I can use a palmpad in the garage, which I'll probably never do, other than for testing, and the alarm keyfobs won't work outside because the repeater doesn't act on them......

Sooner or later, I'll find a method of getting both to work from outside and inside without interference.  For Now, This is fine.

Thanks for suggestions and info.  Gotta go to work, so further checks and tests get put on back burner for day or so.

Little Note to Billaban:  The quote you mentioned, I had read it before, but now I remember.....  The new siding on the house was leveled do the misc. methods used to construct the house.  The leveling was done with that styrofoam with "FOIL" on both sides.  (I really missed that one till just now).  Sometimes it takes a lot of pounding to get ideas into my head.  I'll check to see if the house or siding is slighttly conductive.  This would RF seal the sides of the house, leaving the attic free to radiate outward through the roof.

I should have thought of this sooner.  Thanks again.....

[Tuicemen]

ArtClark:  I certainly didn't take your post as a rant about poor RF !
Your results were curious to me and proof that house construction can make a big difference in the way RF signals are received
I look forward to reading any more tests and results you have concerning your RF signals they may help others to pin point a problem source in their setup!

[ArtClark]

Uh-Oh....

As other people mentioned, the repeater can cause trouble.  If I transmit RF out of the CM15 or Palmpad to trigger a device via a separate receiver (I Forget the number right now....), it seems that the "Smart" repeater will re-transmit this signal.  This produces two of every command sent this way.  (Delayed a little....  Repeater delays a sec.)   It doesn't happen every time, and it isn't much of a problem, except with dim / brighten.  If you can imagine, Push dim, it dims a step, then dims again.  If I dim more than a minimum amount (I.E. push dim for more than a sec. on a palmpad with the pad in the same location as the CM15) then the dim not only works fine, but the repeater doesn't seem to repeat this?

I will (in a day or so.) go through my full test method to verify this repeater thing and post any results that are useful.  Right now, there are too many variables for me to really ascertain where and why everything is happening.  I think the hardest part of testing is trying to push the palmpad buttons in the basement while watching the LEDs on the repeater in the attic.....  I hate to ask for assistance because of the complications that can cause.  (Using macros to remote send from CM15 via RF using PLC to trigger the macro is the only one person method I can think of.)  As I typed, I'll post any USEFUL results I can get....

Thanks again, this is the type of setup fun I really enjoy.  (Even more fun than general X-10 Use....)