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[HR]

When the wife and I moved into our home many years ago, one of the first things I did was look into automating the lighting.  I put up a couple of the slim wall switches and plugged a big X10 transceiver into a central location in the house and managed to get about 12 table lamps working all over the house.  When certain lights wouldn't turn on no matter what I did (but did turn on when the dryer was running), I looked into phase coupling....but took the "poor mans" approach and bought a second transceiver (the smaller ones) and plugged it into that second line of my house on the other phase. My x10 problems were solved!

However as the years have gone by (with no equipment failures either, even the central transceiver works fine long after my kids broke off the antenna) I've noticed holes appearing.  I'm going to guess its too many power strips and too many electronics.   I added a new front projector to my setup and it must make one hell of an electronic racket because plugging it in prevents several lights further down the chain from working properly, no matter where I seem to move the transceivers around.

So my questions are as follows:

1) Without getting into adding multi-hundred dollar parts or calling an electrician, is adding more transceivers a solution...or not really......if you have a stubborn outlet that just wont work...?

2) My original transceiver that is centrally located is large, but my other ones are the size of standard wall plug units.....is there something different about that larger one? Its 7+ years old at this point (all of my equipment is)

3) Is there an inexpensive way to isolate noisy electronic devices that seem to have an obvious effect on X10 signal transmission?

Thanks for your time!

[steven r]

Welcome to the forum, HR!
X10 has setup and provided this forum for users to share feedback and suggestions to other users. The forum is run and supported almost totally by X10 users and is occasionally visited by X10 employees themselves.

I wouldn't get another transceiver. In fact you can have problems with multiple transceivers on the HC. In your case your phases seem to be pretty X10 isolated and things are working now. I wouldn't be surprised if you had signal conflicts if you tried dimming a light while your drier was running, however.

What are the model numbers of the transceivers you have? Some don't play well with others. i.e. While the better transceivers are polite and will wait if they detect a line signal, others just plow ahead and flood the line with additional signals.

It looks like you're going to need some filters for some of your new toys. I imagine they are sucking a lot of your X10 signal. Also don't overlook the little things like laptop, cell phone and other battery charges. They can really zap your X10 signal when plugged in.

Keep in mind that should you improve your signal enough it just might make it strong enough to find its way across the phases. e.g. A good signal can bridge at the line transformer on the street. Needless to say, when your signal is able to make it across the phase your two transceivers may cause problems.

JeffVolt has several useful posts you might want to look at on the forum. Also his web links below have been helpful to many.
His X10 troubleshooting tutorials are at:  http://jvde.us/x10_troubleshooting.htm
Information on his XTB devices is available at:  http://jvde.us/xtb_index.htm

[Brian H]

Since you know the new front projector is a problem. An X10 filter would be needed for it. Some filters and surge strips can absorb X10 signals. So make sure you have a filter made for X10 signals. I have my APC BX1000 UPS on a X10 filter and my new LCD TV also.