batteries

[me too]

Hi,
I live in the New Orleans area and have
evacuated due to Hurricane Katrina. My
house was not damaged but did loose power.
The power in our home came on after two
weeks.  Is there any chance that AHP keep
its settings and began turning on my lights
when the power came back on? I will not be
able to retun home for another week and it
would be nice to know that my lights are
functioning in our absence.

[Brian H]

Doubt it. The battery time is 40 hours at
least by the indicator in the software for
the AHP cm15a interface.

[arf1410]

Battery life question for X10 Pro - or
anyone else.

Do the batteries simply maintain memory, in
which case shouldn't they keep the memory
for YEARS without AC power (look a a watch
with a nickel size battery and an LCD
display, etc)?, or is the battery power
drained in 40 hours becuase it is using the
battery power to generate and send out X10
signals?  Obviously the light bulb would
not turn on in a power outage, but does the
switch still recieve the X10 signal?

[Brian H]

Schematic shows the batteries run the whole
controller except maybe the line
transmitter. There is a on battery signal.
The transmitter uses a higher voltage and I
think is disabled. Even when pluged in after
a week the thing said my batteries where
dead, even though they measured full voltage.

[arf1410]

"Schematic shows the batteries run the
whole  controller except maybe the line
transmitter."

How can that be? - the CM15A works fine
with no batteries installed, as long as AC
power is maintained ...

[raym]

Just a guess...
Unplug it and see what stays powered on.

We got off the thread.

No, the CM15A will not be controlling your
house after two weeks. X10 advertises about
about two days on battery power.

I'm sending you my thoughts and prayers, and
I hope that you return and find your house
as well as you left it.

Regards,

Ken

[Brian H]

Must clarify. When on AC the whole thing is
running on the internal AC Derived power
supply. When the AC is off the batteries
kick in and run the controller thorugh a low
voltage drop diode.

[Brian H]

Must clarify. When on AC the whole thing is
running on the internal AC Derived power
supply. When the AC is off the batteries
kick in and run the controller thorugh a low
voltage drop diode.

[arf1410]

just so I understand ...

Lets assume I turned off the circuit
breaker to my house and had 2 CM15As.  One
was programmed to send X10 signals and
plugged into an outlet.  The other was
plugged into another outlet, and connected
to my laptop running on batteries.  with
the AHP Activity monitor on the laptop, it
wold detect all the normal X10 signals
coming thru the powerline from teh
programmed CM15A to the "monitoring" CM15A?

[Tigger]

 
Looking at the CM15A schematics, I don't see
ANY circuitry that would "switch over" to
batteries.  The batteries feed the same
+5V regulator that the transformer does.

(Of course there is a blocking diode in
place, to prevent the batteries from being
fed power from the transformer.)

I'm not sure what kind of current draw there
would be on the batteries, but there has to
be SOME current flow, I'd imagine. . .

Anyone care to confirm?

T

[Brian H]

When the AC power is ON the diode is back
biased and disconnectes the batteries from
the circuit. When AC is off there is no 30
volts so the transmitter will not work. Also
with no AC there is no zero crossing for the
thing to even try and time a signal; or the
one on the laptop to receive the signals. No
zero crossing no timing to do anything.

[arf1410]

So if the CM15A does essentially nothing
when AC power is off, why would 4 AAA
batteries drain in 40 hours?  They should
be able to maintain memory for years!  What
am I missing?

[Brian H]

Well you would think so. A check of the
controller chips data seet shows that it
uses 15ma to 20ma current in the active
state internal clock used. Standby is much
lower but I don't think X10 can go standby
as it still has to try and keep time. I
measured my cm15a and unplugged from the AC
the battery drain was about 16ma. In an
older cm11a serial Active Home Interface.
Unplugged it is about .4ma. That is about a
40X difference.

[arf1410]

As long as AC power is maintained, is ther
any measurable battery drain?

So the internal clock of the CM15A uses 40X
the power of the internal clock of the
CM11A?  Though I don't have the background
to discuss chip design theory, was there a
good, valid reason why X10 needed to design
this to drain so much battery power?

[Brian H]

I will check that and get back.