kp addr 1 lost communication when switching upb light

mikefamig

Senior Member
Anyone ever see this before? I have seven upb devices connected to the elk through an xsp. four of them are fine, two in the house and two in the detached garage. The other three in the garage have the problem being that the area1 keypad beeps and reports lost communication with kp1 when I switch the lights on and off. It doesn't matter if I switch them from the Iphone EKeypad or the wall switch or upstart. The lights cause keypad 1 to report lost communications.
 
I recently installed the Ditek surge device in the garage but the upb uses the AC lines to activate the lights via an xsp and SA interface and not the data bus.
 
Mike.
 
Is kp1 the same as the area1 keypad?  And is that a keypad in the house or the garage? 
 
You said this happens when you turn the lights on and off, but does it really happen when you turn the lights off, or only when you turn them on?
 
Seems strange that a UPB device would affect the M1G like this.
 
Very strange indeed. I think that my machines are rising up against me. I have problems with the old car, the Elk keeps me generally confused, I had a "check engine light" in my truck last week and had to change an O2 sensor, my garden tiller needs carb work, just changed an idler pulley on my mower this morning and my electric pool vac has a floating electrical cord that need a new plug and socket.Oh and we also need a new pool liner. I feel that my possessions have come to own me. They are all what I call white collar problems and I shouldn't sweat them but I do feel like things come in bunches.
 
What's next?
 
RAL said:
Is kp1 the same as the area1 keypad?  And is that a keypad in the house or the garage? 
Yes the kp1 that is losing comm is in area 1 and is in the house.
 
RAL said:
You said this happens when you turn the lights on and off, but does it really happen when you turn the lights off, or only when you turn them on?
 
I can force it to happen by turning the lights on and off in rapid succession in ekeypad but it has also happened by simply walking up to the wall switch and turning the light on.
RAL said:
Seems strange that a UPB device would affect the M1G like this.
What's stranger is that I can not get the lights in the house or two other lights in the garage to do the same. They work fine. It seems to be specific to the three ceiling lights each having it's own switch in each bay.
 
I'm wondering if it has something to do with the lights on those switches.  Are they LEDs or CFLs rather than incandescent?  Thinking that maybe they are producing some kind of noise that bothers the M1, though how power line noise from the garage could do that escapes me.
 
You could try swapping a switch that works with one that causes the problem and see if the problem follows the switch or not.
 
I just found something. Being that the last thing that I changed was to add the surge protectors I started thinking in that direction.  It came to me that the device has the potential to short the data lines to each other or to ground if it was faulty.
 
I did a nice professional install of the Ditek in the garage but in the house I temporarily installed the Ditek in the M1 enclosure and grounded it to the AC outlet against DEL's advise. At first I was going to remove the device and see if it cured the problem but then it occurred to me to remove the ground strap from the device instead of removing it completely and  sure enough the problem has disappeared.
 
So maybe a faulty surge protector? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that the UPB sends signals over the AC lines in the form of noise that may be upsetting the surge protector through the ground strap on the AC outlet box? DEL did advise me to have a separate ground for the surge protector and to isolate it from the load center and house's AC sytsem altogether. It will be interesting to hear from him on this.
 
Mike.
 
I just looked at Upstart and the three lights in the garage that were having the problem are together on the opposite phase of the other garage lights that were not having the trouble. There is a phase couple installed in a sub panel that is very near the main load center in the basement of the house.
 
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