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[bkenobi]

Could a dimmer cause noise issues?  I have a few around the house that I've never though of being any kind of problem, but I'm curious now.  The PF motion sensor didn't work after 2 activations this morning.  I waked away for ~5 minutes and tried again and it worked.  I'm assuming it has to do with some device in the house that was on the first time and not the second.

I know my wife was in the bathroom prepping for work, so she could have had the following on:

• Bedroom lights (incandescent, so unlikely an issue)
• Bathroom lights (incandescent on a variable dimmer)
• Shower lights/fan (see this thread for description: http://forums.x10.com/index.php?topic=23345.0)
• Hair dryer (probably 120/240 switching power supply)
• Hair straightener (probably 120/240 switching power supply, but not used this morning)
• Heat pump off
• Furnace off (circuit board not filtered yet)

I guess the things I'm considering an issue would be the hair dryer, hair straightener, furnace control board (which will be filtered soon), and maybe the variable dimmer on the shower fan.  I should be getting the filters for the furnace in the next day or two so I'll be able to eliminate that as a noise issue shortly.

[bkenobi]

I think all of the filters (I have the furnace filters, but didn't install them yet) and the XTB-IIR have significantly improved the reliability of my system.  I now can see that the power flash is sending signals a lot more than I was seeing before.  It is, however, not the right address all of the time.  I have the PF set to O1 and I'm seeing many instances of A1 (which is an empty HU address on my system).  After reviewing the X10 protocol, it appears that O (0100) is very close to A (0110).  I've found that the motion sensor setup is somehow causing noise as witnessed by the XTBM. 

With the XTBM plugged into the outlet where the PF resides, if I trip the motion sensor I see "High Noise" and a measure of 0.20.  According to Jeff Volp, anything over 0.1 is devastating, so 2x that is an issue (especially at the transmitter location).

So, I'm thinking that I need to filter the motion sensor now.  But, I'm not sure what to use.  The motion sensor is not using much power and the light that it's actuating is small (60W incandescent), so I suspect any filter on the market would work.  But, I need a wired filter and I don't want it to be large.  Would the XPNR work in this situation?  I'm not familiar with them, but they seem nice and compact.  I think I could fit one inside the single gang I'm currently using which would be a nice benefit.  If I go with an XPF, I'd have to get a 3- or maybe even a 4-gang box.  That's crazy!

[bkenobi]

I am closing this thread out at this point.

I have gone through my entire house's wiring with a fine toothed comb and mapped where everything goes as well as what's powered by what.  In doing so, I was able to determine what devices caused signal strength issues and have installed around a dozen filters to deal with things.  I tried filtering the electric dryer's circuit board, but it didn't seem to help (I installed a pair of XPF in parallel on the logic board leg but after a couple days the dryer decided not to work so I disabled it).

So, with the XTB-IIR installed at the panels, I was able to read signal strengths of between 2.00 and 9.99+ at every outlet in the house with most reading closer to 7.00+.  I'd like to thank everyone for their help on this issue (or what is actually a series of issues).  Most notably, I'd definitely like to thank Jeff Volp who provided WAY more help than was right to expect including a series of 40+ emails over 2 months!

 

[bkenobi]

This is not to reopen the topic, but to give a little bit of an update after another month of use.  After reviewing my logs between May 1-30, I see that there were still a few missed signals from the motion sensor.  At this point, it looks like I have around 1.86% missed signals.  This is not surprising in that the PF is located on the lowest signal strength outlet in the house.  The logs show that these commands were not strong enough for the XTB-IIR to pick them up as valid.  I have a solution should this cause actual problems.  Currently, I'm happy with ~98% accuracy such that I'm not going to do anything to improve things.  I have a backup plan that will solve the problem if I change my mind, so even if I do need to make a change, I know exactly what that will be.