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[ronald hirsch]

I have a good number of computer programmed controllers plugged in around the house, both the older serial type, and the newer USB type, all of which have been bought directly from X-10.

I use about 6 of them, cine the wiring runs can be very long, and I want insure trhat all devices to be controlled are reached.

Several months ago my entire system went banans. Nothing could be controlled via wirless keypads or hard wired controllers (via the Active Home units). I know that periodically, when some of the outside fluorescent type bulbs reach their end of life, they can become great jammers on the line, but that was not teh case. I discovered that one of the USB Active Home USB units had gone crazy, and when I unpliugged it from the wall, all was back to normal.

Yesterday, again the whole system went down, and I found that one of the serial units was now the culprit. When I unplugged it from the wall, all went back to normal. It had not only jammed everything in the house, but it had also sent out crazy signals that turned on some lights, and turned off others, in the process.

When the first USB unit did this, I removed the batteries, let it sit for a week, put in new batteries, cleared the memory, and reloaded all the commands into it. It ran for a whiile, and then went crazy again. So, I'm not going to even try reusing the serial unit that went down now.

The units in question haven't been operational for that long a tgime, and I'm starting to get concerned about the reliability of these units.

Has anyone been having similar problems???

Ronald Hirsch

[Brian H]

Since you have more than one controller. This may not apply, but do you have any X10 repeaters in the mix?

[dave w]

With six controllers;  is it possible they are getting into loops with each other? I am surprised you have gotten six controllers to play nice with each other this long. Have you looked at the activity monitor reports from the units? That will tell you if noise or warfare between the contollers is the problem.

Might consider one controller and one repeater (?).

[ronald hirsch]

I have order in for a "special" from X-10 "package" that included a repeater.

But, it is my understanding that the repeater is a wireless device to repeat signals from handheld wireless controllers. Is this incorrect?

If my problems are occurring because of interactions between multiple Active Home units, how about this as a solution? Change the uploaded commands in different units so that only the ones which apply in the area where the unit is plugged are present. This will avoid having the problem of duplicated commands fighting with each other?

Or, another approach might be to change the timing in different units for the same commands - that way, they would not interfere with each other??

Question re the time of day set in each unit - I assume that when one clears everything in a unit, and then downloads all the commands, that the time setting in a unit is also reset automatically to the clock setting on the computer. Is this correct, as I see no way to set the time itself on the modules, or have I missed it?

I have noted that there can a small differences of time settings on occasions, where a light comes on, and I manually turn it off, and then a few seconds later, it will again automatically come on, triggered by a different module.

Ronald Hirsch

[Brian H]

I may have not been clear in my repeater question. Do you have any X10 Powerline Repeaters?
They sometimes get into a signal firestorm with the controllers. The Leviton HCA2 has been reported as a problem and my Smarthome Dryer Outlet model has a fit with X10 two way modules like a AM14A; when they are first powered up and sent their request for status messages.

[ronald hirsch]

I presently do not have any repeaters of any kind installed in the system.

I have just finished reconfiguring things as follows.

I've programmed 3 modules with all the activities, but I've offset the times between them to 5 minutes for one, and 10 minutes for the other. These 3 are spread around the house to cover just about all items to be controlled.

And, a 4th module, which is in an outlet that can't be reached by any of the other modules, to control a nearby outsdie light, was programmed only with the commands for that specific fixture.

So, now that any "same" commands have been separated in time for all the modules, there really shouldn't be any further conflicts. But, time will tell.

Even though I am a hi-tech person, I've not yet played with the macro capabilities. I probably should, as I"ve written many thousands of lines of macro coding in WP and QP. What would be interesting would be if I could generate a command module for a given light, where the "on" and "off" times were relative. That is, turn on when the command was issued, and turn off when the set time on is reached. Then, these could be put into a macro, each with a given delay period until the commands were actually sent out.

This arrangement would make it simpler to create the various files that I had to do where I moved ahead all the on and off times for all modules individually to avoid possible interactions between modules. This doesn't seem to be a capability in the older serial CM11A. But possibly it is in the CM15A. I'll download the latest manuals for both, and read them over carefully. Or have I missed this?

The CM11A must go way back. It can't handle filenames that are not 8.3 - which is sad indeed, and a real PITA.

I started using X-10 stuff over 20 years ago, but back then there was much less to choose from.

Ron Hirsch

[Dan Lawrence]

BTW, it's not the CM11A that can't handle long filenames, It's Active Home. It was written for Windows 3, so any long filename that is entered get's tiled.

As an example, when I used Active Home, my holiday file was called Xmas.x10.  If you are looking at AH while it is running, you will see that. The enitire path of the open file is C:\Progra~1\ActiveHo~1\xmas.x10 for example. This occured even through WinME.

[ronald hirsch]

Yes, I do recognize that it's the software which is the reason. I should have made that clear when I commented.

The code dates way back, and they never rewrote it, which is strange, as they still sell the CM11A, and I'd guess that there is essentially no one using an old Windows version which is still back in the 8.3 filename era.

Ronald Hirsch

[Brian H]

Yes the RCA OEM version has been on the sales pages recently and some even have problems with XP and Active Home.

[Dan Lawrence]

That amazed me. 

That RCA OEM version sale was one of the weirdest offers X10 ever cam up with. Somebody found a lot of RCA branded CM11's lying in some X10 wharehouse somewhere and some bright boy decided to sell them, complete with a fancy new name for the software, which turned out to be AH 1.42, since the fancy name's link took you to the X10 software page where 1.42 is still available.  Talk about selling to the rubes.

[ronald hirsch]

I wouldn't necessarily call it "selling to the rubes". The older CM11A is of course missing various nice features that the newer USB CM15A incorporates, and the file naming protocols are still back in the 8.3 era. But, the old CM11A has one nice feature that makes it very handy for certain uses.

I have a number wall plug in lights et devices, that are difficult to control with a module that is remotely located. So for those, I use a CM11a (or RCA equivalent) dedicated to just that device, and program it with only a single module listed. And having the ability to plug directly into the front of the CM11A makes the connection much easier. And, at the price of $10, it's still a good buy, and functions well. I presently have 3 such situations requiring this arrangement.

One of them is where I want to control a device which uses a high quality surge protector (and filter), where I do not want to lose that protection (Florida has too many lightning storms). There's no way the command signals can get through the protector from a remotely located command module, so I use a CM11A control module right where the device plugs into the surge protector. Since they're both on the "SAFE" side of the protector, this works fine, and I can keep my protection.

I did resolve the issue of having a number of Active Home modules spread around the house to insure coverage of "remotely located" items to control. I took the original control program, and duplicated it with time offsets of a few minutes for each successive control module. This avoid having multiple modules transmitting at the same time, and interfering with each other. It also gives me a redundant transmitted command, to insure that the desired operation will occur.

Ron Hirsch

[dave w]

I have a number wall plug in lights et devices, that are difficult to control with a module that is remotely located. So for those, I use a CM11a (or RCA equivalent) dedicated to just that device, and program it with only a single module listed. And having the ability to plug directly into the front of the CM11A makes the connection much easier. And, at the price of $10, it's still a good buy, and functions well. I presently have 3 such situations requiring this arrangement.

I did resolve the issue of having a number of Active Home modules spread around the house to insure coverage of "remotely located" items to control. I took the original control program, and duplicated it with time offsets of a few minutes for each successive control module. This avoid having multiple modules transmitting at the same time, and interfering with each other. It also gives me a redundant transmitted command, to insure that the desired operation will occur.

Ron,
Wow! Very unique way to use multiple controllers, but doesn't it create a "software housekeeping" nightmare, remembering which units fire early, which units fire late, which unit is for the south end of the house, and which is for the north, etc?

I suppose, it makes for great redundancy and reliability. I understand your power problems. We used to live in south Florida where Florida Power and Light, was fondly renamed "Florida Flicker and Flash.

[Brian H]

Well I have a redundant setup myself. I have a 1132CU [X10] and a 2414U [Insteon] covering the same set of modules [mixed X10-/Insteon in X10 mode]. 5 minutes apart for safety. Except that they calculate sunset differently and on some days; my Sunset timers; clobber the other one and strange things happen.

[ronald hirsch]

The redundant setup is not as complex or difficult as it might seem. I have about 10 modules that have control times set for them in my "master" file. I give that file a name which includes "00" in the name.

Then I go through and offset all times by 5 minutes, and resave that file with "05" in the name. I repeat this a few times with "10", etc.. It's easy and quick to generate these variations. Then I just keep notes, and mark each controller as to which variation it was programmed with.

And even if one did have two controllers with the same time for an event, it's not a given that when these both fire off, that there will be a problem. I had multiple controllers set the same for many years, with very few problems observed.

Ron Hirsch

[Dan Lawrence]

Ron.

Active Home and Active Home Pro should not step on each other, even if both are controlling the same modules.

I have a Viao laptop running WinME with Active Home 1.32 and the CM11A interface. The file is a duplicate of the Master file in AHP on the main box.  The Viao is the emergency box if the main box dies.  During the setup of Active Home on the laptop, AHP was open. As the modules were added and teasted, each program would react as the various modules were addresses.

I did note that neither version saw any odd modules in "Ffind Other Computers", and module activiity done in AH did not show in AHP's Activity Monitor, even while AHP was open.