UPB Lights Flickering and Worse

[DotNetDog]

OK folks...this is a strange one. First off, let me say that I have not started the "real" problem diagnosing yet...that will be either tonight or this weekend.

I have PCS UPB switches throughout my house. I probably have 100+ switches and they were installed about 6 months ago. The switches are a mixture of keypads, Dimmers, and Slaves.

PROBLEM: During the night, and sometimes during day, I can hear a buzz from every switch. And...(fasten your seatbelts, folks)...lights that are on will begin to fade up and/or down quickly. Lights that were off will turn on. My wife says this occurs during the day but I've only seen this at night.

The problem begins usually after midnight and generally stops by 7am (times are rough guesses). Last night was a prime example. I started hearing the buzzing around 12:30am. Somewhere around 2am I notices lights on outside of my bedroom. It was the foyer chandelier and the laundry room light. I got up and turned them off...went to the bathroom...and they were back on. And they were flickering (or dimming up and down quickly).

I went to the gym from 6:30am to 7:30am. When I left the problem was still happening. When I returned at 7:30am the problem was gone...no flickering...no buzzing...nothing.

My first guess is a bad switch somewhere. But I can't figure out why the problem shows up mostly at night.

If the problem occurs this evening then I'll start diagnosing it...but I've never seen it occur before midnight. And I gotta sleep! I may have to wait until Friday night to start on this.

Anyone have any ideas to help my start diagnosing this? Oh, I have not [yet] run UpStart to look for noise. Also, I do not keep my PIM connected so it's not that.

Once it occurs again I figured I would start turning off breakers and see if I can isolate an area with a possible bad switch.

 

[Deane Johnson]

I was going to post the question to see if you've contacted Bill Murphy and asked for Ghost Busters to come over.

But I guess it would be more appropriate to suggest you contact PCS and ask them what they think. I don't have UPB due to lack of neutrals in some boxes, but in my X-10 days I had to have their help and they were great. They even custom modified a dimmer for me so it would handle a close to maxed out load without burning out. No charge.

 

[DotNetDog]

I was going to post the question to see if you've contacted Bill Murphy and asked for Ghost Busters to come over.

But I guess it would be more appropriate to suggest you contact PCS and ask them what they think. I don't have UPB due to lack of neutrals in some boxes, but in my X-10 days I had to have their help and they were great. They even custom modified a dimmer for me so it would handle a close to maxed out load without burning out. No charge.

If the lights would just do this earlier in the evening then I would have the perfect house for Trick-or-Treat this year! I plan to do some basic diagnosing of the problem so that I have more info for PCS. Right now all I could tell them is "it's freaking weird!".

 

[michelkenny]

Might be a silly question but do you have any automation controllers that would have wacky rules? If you do have a controller, I would disable the UPB portion and see if the problem still continues.

 

[Desert_AIP]

Do you have a water softener with a timed generation cycle starting around midnight?
A septic system with a pump set to deliver to the field at midnight?
Other timed appliances that may be producing noie on the line?

 

[thedogzeus]

Line noise. Isolate source, add filters as necessary.

 

[DotNetDog]

No automation controller (at this time). No timer-based devices.

So I got home from work this evening and, of course, nothing. No buzzing...no flickering. It'll start later tonight. I have to get my sleep tonight so I'll have to diagnose this tomorrow (Friday) night.

 

[DotNetDog]

UPDATE: Well, my poltergeist was fairly quiet last night. I said fairly. Did not hear any buzzing, no lights flickering. However, when I went to bed all lights were off. At 3am nature called me out of my sleep and I noticed that the foyer chandelier was on. Hmmmm...

That is actually very interesting. It suggests that it could be that switch that is having problems. My plan is to locate the break switch for the foyer light and mark it somehow...maybe some blue painter tape (I happen to have some on hand). Then, at night when the show really gets going again I will turn off that breaker and see if everything gets quiet.

Stay tuned....

edit: I turned the chandelier off and it did not come back on.

 

[bmil]

I have a vacation home in the boonies with about 30 UPB switches (mostly PCS but a few SA and HAI). The power from the co-op power company experiences frequent brief outages and seems to be of questionable stability.

A couple times a month, 5 or 6 UPB switches will just come on (not always the same ones but there are some that never come on when this happens). If I'm there at the time I sometimes notice it preceeded by a dimming or quick flickering of all the lights. Sometimes the small APC UPS units on my DVR's will rapidly cut in and out when this happens.

This happens often enough so I have several rules in my M1 that issue an "all lights off" link several times daily when I'm not up there.

Clearly UPB switches are susceptible to turning themselves on under a certain condition of poor mains power quality..

 

[tmbrown97]

Maybe you can turn this into a haunted house for halloween!

I'd plug the PIM in and have it watch for and log any transmissions its sees for the next couple days; and possible even let it run comm. tests repeatedly for a day or too - then check out the logs to see if anything weird happens.

Did you install these, or hire an installer? If the latter, did you pay him and leave on good terms, or could he be messing with you? h34r:

 

[DotNetDog]

Work2Play:: It's a newly built house. I'm definitely on good terms with the builder and his electrician.

UPDATE: Do my ghost is really messing with me. There was no flickering or lights randomly turning on/off Friday or Saturday nights. Those were the two nights that I could stay awake all night diagnosing problems. Then, last night, when I needed to sleep...it happened! I woke up at 3am to see lights on outside my bedroom and they were flickering away.

I got out of bed, put on my robe and walked down stairs (on my way to the breaker box). As I reached the main level the noise and flickering stopped. I waited a few minutes but nothing...back to bed. Five minutes later it starts again.

This time the buzzing and flickering continued so I was able to turn breakers off. I started with the foyer light...no change. Then other breakers...still no change. I eventually turned almost every breaker off and back on with no change...the problem continued.

At this point I am thinking is has to be power line noise coming into the house. Hmmmm.... Do they make whole house filters? Time to research that...

 

[sharby]

I too had ghosts in my UPB Gen 2 environment. I was able to diagnose and RESOLVE by correlating the times of these HAPPENINGS with log information on the UPB network.

I have Powerhome 2 (http://www.power-home.com) running in my house to give me 100% automation on the ELK M1G. Powerhome now has NATIVE UPB2 support where you can hook up a UPB-PIM and control lights. If you import your UPSTART config into Powerhome, you'll be able to turn on/off lights, etc.. You'll have a log of EVERY UPB command time stamped.

Simply find out what signals were transmitted and you'll be able to isolate quickly.

Hope this helps!


-=*Sharby*=-

 

[DotNetDog]

I was planning on just using UpStart to log everything since it also has that capability. However, the problem is being very evasive. In fact, it hasn't re-occurred in the past several days. It's a wait and see game at this point.

 

[sharby]

That's why its great to use Powerhome. You won't have to leave UPStart running indefinately.

Just a suggestion. Maybe the ghost is waiting for 11/1/11 to come back.

-=*Sharby*=-

 

[tmbrown97]

So, I'm guessing the only reason you haven't turned on logging yet is not having a spare CIM? Otherwise there's no reason not to.