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[compumike]

Hi there! I have an XPT transmitter with XP2D-W-NS faceplate (four buttons: on/off and up/down), talking to an XPDF module in the ceiling driving a 300W halogen light fixture.

On and off buttons work fine, with the soft-on and soft-off fading smoothly over a few seconds.

However, when I try to use the dimming, I can't reach intermediate dim levels. Pressing the down button (whether just a single tap on the button, or holding it in) results in the lights fading to and then staying at perhaps 20% of full power. Pressing the up button (whether just a single tap on the button or holding it in) results in the lights fading up all the way to 100% power. I just can't get it to stay in the middle!

FYI -- it worked fine when I installed this system several years ago. It doesn't work now. I don't know what changed. I have tested with all computers/air conditioners/etc in the house off to minimize noise, but no change.

Has anyone seen behavior like this before? If you had to guess which part is defective (XPT/XP2D/XPDF), which would it be? Thanks so much in advance!!!

[Brian H]

Do you have any other X10 controller or remote with a transceiver?  That can send the same On,Off Dim and Brighten commands to test the XPDF?

Do you have maybe a spare Lamp Module or wall switch you can set to the same Address as the XPDF? So you can see how it reacts to the signals sent by the XPT with XP2D Face Plate?

Any coupler repeaters in the house?

Any interfaces like a CM15A W/Active Home Pro or CM11 with Active Home?

[bkenobi]

My guess would be either the button is transmitting too many times (button stuck) or there is a reapeater that is changing 1-2 dim commands into many.  I believe the dim goes at 7% intervals (from memory and can't remember why 7%) so if you repeated 2x when pressing dim and then the repeater kicked that 2-3x more, that would make 40-60% commanded dim.  Brian's suggestion of using the CM15A (or similar) controller would be mine as well.  That way you could see what commands are actually being sent over the power line.

[JeffVolp]

There is one other possibility.  Both the TM751 and RR501 transceivers can get stuck in a dimming loop under certain conditions.  I ran across it several times while developing the XTB-IIR.  I thought I had a bug in my firmware, but it was actually the remote RR501 locked up in a loop sending dim commands.  It seemed to be sensitive to where the transceiver was located.  So if you are using one of the X10 transceivers, try a different wall outlet - maybe in a different room or closer to the distribution panel.

Jeff