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[basshateme]

I have 3 exterior and five interior lighting circuits and all have quit responding. It has worked flawlessly for years then one day nothing. I have cleared my interface and downloaded to it. Nothing. I have several other controllers and none of them work either.

Any suggestions? Anybody?

Thanks in advance.

Marty

[Brian H]

What is new in the home. Like a TV Computer etc? Anything even a new cell phone charger. Try unplugging anything new and see if things improve.

[basshateme]

The only thing new is I bought and plugged in an RV but I disconnected it and still have the same problem. The problem actually started before I brought the RV home. Thanks for the response.

Marty

[JeffVolp]

I have 3 exterior and five interior lighting circuits and all have quit responding. It has worked flawlessly for years then one day nothing. I have cleared my interface and downloaded to it. Nothing. I have several other controllers and none of them work either.

For some quick troubleshooting, plug one of your controllers into the same circuit as a module that doesn't work.  If the module still does not respond, then you probably have a noise source that is blocking X10 signals.  As someone else said, it could be something as simple as a cellphone charger or another plug-in "wall-wart" power supply.  Or it might be a nearby wireless intercom or baby monitor.  I wrote a troubleshooting series to help diagnose and solve X10 problems:

http://jvde.us/x10_troubleshooting.htm

Jeff

[steven r]

What is new in the home?...

My thoughts exactly!
It can be as simple as phone charger left plugged in. In addition to using power while plugged in, it could be just enough to suck the X10 signal too low to be effective.
Things that have caused signal loss for me:

• My or my daughter's laptop charger. I now have a filter for her to use when she visits.
• Battery charger for a portable car jumper battery. Took me awhile to find that one becuase I forgot I had it plugged in the garage.

Also background things such as AC & refrigerator sometimes can be a problem.
I now have a charging station the consists of a cheap outlet strip plugged into a filter. Side benefit to this is that I now have all my chargers in one place and know where that is.

If you have absolutely nothing new or changed, including moving an item from one place to another then you need to search to see if a product has become more of a signal sucker. This can be a bit time consuming. First thing I'd do is try downloading a timer to the CM15A and moving it closer to the items that have stopped working. Then you need to to start taking the items are typical signal suckers such as TV & chargers off the grid. Quick way is to start flipping breakers off but ultimately you'll need to unplug a few things to narrow things down.

[basshateme]

Thanks to all who replied. It seems to be my RV. I think its the inverter putting noise on the line via the neutal. I killed the circuit by the breaker and I still had the problem. The problem only went away when I unplugged it. The only thing that is disconnected by unplugging completely is the neutral. Is there anyway of adding a filter to this?

Thanks in advance,

Marty

[dave w]

Thanks to all who replied. It seems to be my RV. I think its the inverter putting noise on the line via the neutal. I killed the circuit by the breaker and I still had the problem. The problem only went away when I unplugged it. The only thing that is disconnected by unplugging completely is the neutral. Is there anyway of adding a filter to this?

Thanks in advance,

Marty

It might not be you inverter. It could be your coach battery charger which is likely a switching charger. That charger is run off 120V. Mine was mounted under the refrige and plugged into the frige outlet. Easly filtered once you find where it is hidden.

[steven r]

...I killed the circuit by the breaker and I still had the problem. The problem only went away when I unplugged it. The only thing that is disconnected by unplugging completely is the neutral...

Interesting... Glad you identified the problem.

I'd be curious as to why killing the breaker wasn't enough and it required unplugging. I always thought that was enough to isolate a circuit from influencing X10 signals. What is still connected when a breaker is disconnected other than neutral and ground? How can something between just neutral and ground affect an X10 signal? Brian, Jeff, others... Any ideas?

[JeffVolp]

I'd be curious as to why killing the breaker wasn't enough and it required unplugging. I always thought that was enough to isolate a circuit from influencing X10 signals. What is still connected when a breaker is disconnected other than neutral and ground? How can something between just neutral and ground affect an X10 signal? Brian, Jeff, others... Any ideas?

I saw this post earlier, but didn't respond because I didn't really have any idea why turning off the power didn't eliminate the noise.  It normally takes both hot and neutral to complete a circuit.  Things are a little different at RF, but the 120KHz used by X10 should not couple sufficiently to cause problems without a complete circuit.  Even if noise is injected between neutral and ground, they should be common at the distribution panel, effectively shorting out any signal.

It can't be the charger because killing the AC power would also turn off the charger.

Are you certain that the breaker you turned off did kill the AC power to the RV?  Is there any chance that that outlet is wired incorrectly?

Jeff

[dave w]

Thanks to all who replied. It seems to be my RV. I think its the inverter putting noise on the line via the neutal. I killed the circuit by the breaker and I still had the problem.
Thanks in advance,

Marty

Marty when you say breaker do you mean the breaker feeding the RV or the RVs breaker for the inverter output? I thought you meant the inverters breaker. If it was the breaker feeding "shore power" to the RV then Jeff and Steve are on the right track where I routed myself on to a siding

If you tripped the breaker feeding the RV and you still had no X10 until you unplugged the RV, then something isn't right or what it appears to be.  You don't have 60 Amp service fed by two breakers do you?

[basshateme]

I feed a 30amp receptacle to plug my RV into from a breaker in my house breaker box. I turn the house breaker off and still had the problem. Only when I unplugged from the receptacle the problem went away. The breaker only breaks the "hot" wires and not the neutral so I think the noise is traveling back to the house via the neutral. The battery charger has 120vac primary so the neutral would still be connected to the house. Whether the its the neutral is the problem or not I need something that would filter the noise on this line that is rated for 30amps. X10 has the XPF but it says only rated for 20amps. Any suggestions? Thanks for the responses thus far.

Marty

[dave w]

I feed a 30amp receptacle to plug my RV into from a breaker in my house breaker box. I turn the house breaker off and still had the problem. Only when I unplugged from the receptacle the problem went away. The breaker only breaks the "hot" wires and not the neutral so I think the noise is traveling back to the house via the neutral. The battery charger has 120vac primary so the neutral would still be connected to the house. Whether the its the neutral is the problem or not I need something that would filter the noise on this line that is rated for 30amps. X10 has the XPF but it says only rated for 20amps. Any suggestions? Thanks for the responses thus far.

Marty

You may not need a thirty amp filter (does any one make one that big?). It may be only one thing in the RV causing the problem. Start tripping breakers one at a time and checking for X10 operation after each trip. Turn each breaker back ON after each test. If X10 suddenly starts working investigate everything in the RV on that circuit. If X10 never comes back, do the test again but do not turn the breakers back ON after each trip and see if X10 starts working.