Tell me this type of stuff happens to other people too!???

[phenix]

Well the WAF went down a hair tonight. After fixing some stuff on the HAI panel tonight I was walking around showing my wife how smart I was and how great the system was working. So about 20 minutes go buy and we're making dinner and I notice that one of my outside flood lights are flashing. I was like "huh, why the hell is that happening?" No sooner did that thought clear my head when my wife noticed a cop car pulling down our driveway. I quickly stopped the light from flashing and the cop car drove down turned around and the pulled out of the drive. I thought "phew" I loaded up the PC Access program and fixed the problem (a timer i forgot to delete). Then two cop cars pull down the driveway. So my pregnant wife walks outside and says "everything is fine my husband is trying to automated the lights he can't just push the button like the rest of us". The cops start laughing (at me I presume) and they get back in their cruisers and leave. Ugg Automation 1 Me 0

Tell me this type of stuff happens to other people too!?!?

 

[123]

Except for the public ridicule, yes.

My wife is not only a willing and able partner in my HA efforts, she's the VP of Quality Assurance. I'm up to my eyeballs in HA so everything seems 'obvious'. She is detached from the development process and simply experiences the finished product. If she finds an issue, well, it's back to the drawing board for me! Sometimes she pitches in during the debugging process and also tries to report anomalies to the best of her recollection. Fresh eyes help to uncover little quirks that escaped my attention.

Our current 'favourite bug' is the one where we walk into the basement and all lights in the home turn on. In a word, X10. A motion detector instructs the M1 to turn on the basement light but I suspect the signal gets corrupted and the coupler-repeater rebuilds it as ALL LIGHTS ON. Naturally, this doesn't happen all of the time ... especially not when you are trying to debug it.

 

[ricks]

Here's one for ya.

My wife gets up at 5 while I wait until about 7:30. One morning as she was leaving for work she told me a woman called just after she got up, quite upset, saying that someone from our telephone number kept calling her and telling her there was an emergency about the electrical power being down. The woman said it didn't sound like a recording (AT&T Natural Voices) but the man wouldn't answer her questions - just kept repeating the warning. My wife asked who she was and where she was from and assured her that no one here had called her and as a matter of fact, we didn't think we even knew anyone from Plymouth (Mass).

As my wife left the house visibly upset I didn't have the heart to tell her that I had programed our system to call my cell phone whenever we lost power in case it happened while we were away. I must have mis-typed my cell phone number and the local power must have been bouncing. Oops. What was even worse is that there is a nuclear power plant located in Plymouth, with huge speakers on telephone poles and all sorts of emerency evacuation drills. As I sipped my coffee and stared vacantly out the window all I could picture was this woman and her family franticly piling into the minivan in their pajamas at 5 AM with their emergency evacuation kits strapped to their backs. I smiled, finished my coffee and then went and fixed the number.

Rick

 

[FrankMc]

Hi Guys

Those stories are funny ;-)

Slightly different ..work related......Many many years ago when i was working in the security industry i was doing a service on an alarm system ....Part of the service was to send some alarms thru to the central station ....I noticed the old Sescoa strap dialler wasnt shutting down and kept dialling out,so i put my telephone butt across the line and then i started to laugh ...i handed the telephone butt to another guy and asked him to listen...Some old chap on the other end was getting all these calls and was swearing like a trooper .....;-)

Frank

 

[PAPutzback]

At least you know when your security system goes off it gets attention.

 

[sic0048]

Well the WAF went down a hair tonight. After fixing some stuff on the HAI panel tonight I was walking around showing my wife how smart I was and how great the system was working. So about 20 minutes go buy and we're making dinner and I notice that one of my outside flood lights are flashing. I was like "huh, why the hell is that happening?" No sooner did that thought clear my head when my wife noticed a cop car pulling down our driveway. I quickly stopped the light from flashing and the cop car drove down turned around and the pulled out of the drive. I thought "phew" I loaded up the PC Access program and fixed the problem (a timer i forgot to delete). Then two cop cars pull down the driveway. So my pregnant wife walks outside and says "everything is fine my husband is trying to automated the lights he can't just push the button like the rest of us". The cops start laughing (at me I presume) and they get back in their cruisers and leave. Ugg Automation 1 Me 0

Tell me this type of stuff happens to other people too!?!?

So they were just checking on the flashing light and it wasn't a false alarm signal going out? If so, first, I'm impressed that the cops paid that much attention and second, if it had been a real alarm signal (false alarm), they may not have been so pleasant about that. Depending on your local department, you might have also been slapped with a false alarm fee.

Good story though!

 

[tmbrown97]

I think the best one I can come up with isn't quite HA related... several years ago when we all relied on modems to connect to the internet (high speed was coming around but was still too complex for some people) - our CEO was very tempermental about his laptop. It had to be really easy for him to plug in at a hotel and dial the internet or I got an earful every time - but he really didn't understand what he was doing - he just followed the instructions taped to the computer.

During one trip, something happened where he was trying to edit the 9's ans the 1's... he couldn't get the damn thing to connect - was trying for 20 mins, when the cops showed up at his door and demanded that they be allowed to search his room. Apparently there were a bunch of repeated 911 calls from his room... Luckily he had somewhat of a sense of humor about the whole thing, since I'm still employed!

 

[Digger]

Two years ago someone was testing a control panel at work and having it report to our in house central station (on an internal extension). They could not get it to connect to the receiver but two days later the CEO checked his voicemail and ............ well you can figure out the rest.

Needless to say the receiver is no longer on ext 401 when the CEO is on 101.

 

[Squintz]

I use to always yell at my wife for leaving the laundry room light on. Then one day I just happened to be in the basement when the light came on automatically. Turns out I had reprogrammed all my z-wave devices except the laundry room light. The laundry room light use to be node 1 but now the hall light was node 1. I had a remote switch associated with node 1. So everytime we turned the hall light on from that remote switch it also turned the laundry room light on. That went on for months because nobody was ever in the basement when it was happening. I can't even tell you how many times I yelled at her for leaving that light on.

 

[drozwood90]

Squintz...kind of like the "default" link 241 that is in UPB switches...man, how many times have I left that in there?

Then something happens and a bunch of random lights go on in the house!

--Dan