No noise on UPB one day - unusable the next

[IndyMike]

Hello Ano,

I do agree that there are significant signalling differences between UPB and X10. Nonetheless, the coupling methods being used are similar to those used by X10. Component values will be very different given the much lower frequency (pulse width) of the UPB chirp.

I do totally agree that the performance of inverted/non-inverted coupling depends on the users installation. Sorry if I clouded this by bringing X10 into the mix. My point was that inverted coupling will be suject to signal cancellation by large 240V resistive loads (water heaters, ovens, etc.). The amount of cancellation will depend on the resistnace of the 240V element and it's distance from the coupler. As Desert_AIP noted, this can be mitigated by adding additional inverting couplers - effectively reducing the coupler impedance by placing them in parallel.

My actual point in posting was to chime in that I believed Desert_AIP hit the nail on the head. A large resistive load switching on/off could produce the symptoms that the OP was describing. Again, that message did not come across in my diatribe.

 

[ano]

From what I have seen and experienced, purely resistive 240V loads don't do much coupling, or inverse coupling with UPB. With X10, a water heater or electric dryer being on would make a big difference, but I haven't had that same experience with UPB.

 

[pete_c]

I have two 240V loads both to the furnace & AC. That said I have not seen a UPB signal increase/decrease with the 240V either off or on. I've never paid attention to my legacy XTB other than seeing some great signals (recently added the two phase TW-523 XTB device - works great).

Here it appears than the next door neighbors pool pump is off as I can get just fine to all of my UPB switches from the adjacent to the fuse panel PIMs and I see no noise now.

I did recently install a number of SA-US20's and SA-US11-40-W's and had a few issues with 3 switches.

I configured them with my floating SA UPB USB PIM in the same room as the switch. Found two SA-US11-40-W's which were "defective". Odd though one worked fine for a day or so. My wife went to shut one off and it came on by itself. She went back and forth with this for a few times; then told me about it. I attempted to access it with Upstart and had no luck. I then attempted to program it and could not get it into program mode. The second one I could put it into programming mode. I started to access the device; then it just quit on me and I couldn't access it again. That said I replaced these two UPB switches and have had no issues. The SA-US11-40-W in question worked seemingly fine except for dimming it to 30%. Dimmed at 30% it would flicker in a strobe like fashion (using a regular incandescent bulb). I have never seen this before with my other UPB switches. I replaced it and its working fine now.

 

[jombi122]

HI all,

Thanks for all of the advice. Just a quick update - I did get a hold of Simply Automated and as luck would have it I live one town over from their HQ so they offered to have me stop by to check out my PIM. He also advised that as the noise seems to be coming from the street I should try to put a capacitor between the two legs to try and knock down some of the noise. I'll keep you all posted.

To answer a few of the questions that some have asked of me I'll reply that no, this is a recent problem. I did not have any problems before that Saturday before the AC capacitor blew. I have moved the PIM around from floor to floor and room to room. I seem to have very similar noise on each side. Strangely, about once every 5 minutes the noise goes away and I get very good signal from 3 to 10 seconds and then back to the noise. Not sure if this is the PIM but as I'll have SA check it out I'll let you know.

 

[pete_c]

I still have X-10 configured in the house today with an XTB dual phase / TW-523 emulation device configured. Historically have been using XTB for many years and have not had a signal problem across the two phases in my home.

That said I have left my X-10 filter in place and it doesn't seem to do anything for me relating to the UPB noise/lower signal strength that I see intermittently coming from the next door neighbors pool pump.

 

[bfisher]

Sorry to revive an old topic, but I had this same issue just 2-3 months ago. My neighbor did some construction on his house and I suddenly had a ton of noise.

The good news is I fixed it pretty inexpensively... (Ymmv)

I put in a lot of UPB filters in my house. Huh? Yep. I guessed that my battery backups were sucking up the strong signal (making my baseline lower) so the extra noise was now causing me problems. I added 5 UPB plugin filters (on the outlets that may battery backup devices were plugged into) and now I'm back up with no issues.

Might be worth a shot for you. These plugin filters were like $25 a piece iirc. I saw an immediate improvement with just 2, but put all 5 in just to be safe (covers most of my UPS devices). I plan to pick up some more just to have for any future UPS or big-screen devices.

 

[Mr Spock]

I put in a lot of UPB filters in my house.

Which UPB filters did you buy and how much were they?

 

[elcano]

My inverter A/C causes a terrible noise in my house, but most of the times devices get to communicate successfully anyway. The most finicky dimmers are SAI's US22-40 Universal Dual dimmer. For some reason these fail whenever others dont.

I suspect that power electronics in neighborhood (from inverter motors, or those found in computer switching power supplies) should cause a lot more problems today than when UPB was initially invented.