UPB Noise problems!!
- Thread starter DeLicious
- Start date
I had this happen as well a few months ago to my Insteon system before I went over to Z-Wave, some of which was due to this very issue. I'm out in the country and during especially wet weather there would be what was apparently system arcing somewhere that would wipe out everything including Insteon and X-10. I have a radio receiver that will tune down to those frequencies and you can hear the broadband noise when this stuff happens. Try listening around 131.65khz for Insteon (X-10 is 120khz), and UPB looks to use a spread spectrum 4-40khz. Of course any arcing at insulators during bad weather will create a broad-band signal.
I also have a TED (The Energy Detective) which I use to monitor power usage. This device also uses the powerline to transmit its data and would interfere with both X-10 and Insteon somewhat because it was transmitting seemingly right in the middle of both of them. I had to install a filter between the TED transmitter and its circuit breaker to attenuate the data signal to the rest of the AC lines so that I could get fairly clean X-10 and Insteon to the rest of the house. So between external powerline noise, unavailability of hardware like an RF remote and the TED problem, I went to Z-Wave. No reliability problems since. Of course more hardware (and money)would be nice
Mike
I also have a TED (The Energy Detective) which I use to monitor power usage. This device also uses the powerline to transmit its data and would interfere with both X-10 and Insteon somewhat because it was transmitting seemingly right in the middle of both of them. I had to install a filter between the TED transmitter and its circuit breaker to attenuate the data signal to the rest of the AC lines so that I could get fairly clean X-10 and Insteon to the rest of the house. So between external powerline noise, unavailability of hardware like an RF remote and the TED problem, I went to Z-Wave. No reliability problems since. Of course more hardware (and money)would be nice
Mike
OK, this is no longer an isolated incident. It's 5:00 PM, and noise is off the charts again... luckily, after the incident a couple days ago, i made all local control not send links, so at least those work.
however, i can no longer blame this on the snow (in the 50's today). it looks more and more like it must be from outside the house, although I can't prove it. The only thing I know is that nothing is on in my house that is not normally on. At this rate, if this happens every other day, I'll have to declare UPB unusable soon. Somebody who cares about whether or not I use UPB, please help.
however, i can no longer blame this on the snow (in the 50's today). it looks more and more like it must be from outside the house, although I can't prove it. The only thing I know is that nothing is on in my house that is not normally on. At this rate, if this happens every other day, I'll have to declare UPB unusable soon. Somebody who cares about whether or not I use UPB, please help.
Steve
Senior Member
Who's devices are they - SAI? If so call Brad Cone at 760-431-2100. They are very good at support and I'm sure will do whatever in their power to at least help diagnose it.DeLicious said:
Also, as a test, are you friendly with one of your neighbors? If so, take a laptop and PIM and an appliance or lamp module over to their house and check it out. See if they have noise as well. If so, try another neighbor. If all the neighbors have the same noise then it is a good chance it is coming from outside. I have heard once that a bad transformer put a ton of noise on the line. If you can show there is all this noise in several houses perhaps you can get the local utility company to do some tests or find the faulty component. I don't know the size of your install or your local area but I know this was done before. If you know the layout of your power grid and who is on what transformer it would be ideal if you can try the above in someone's house on a different transformer also.
Also, have any of your neighbors plugged in any major electrical equipment outside their house?
If you do not have a problem in a neighbors house on the same transformer then you need to look harder in your place for something that might have gone bad. I know its not fun, but there are always gotchas with PLC. I went thru the same thing with x10 and could never get it to work, even on a single circuit with nothing else there.
Do you have any CFL's in your house, either old or new? You may want to remove those to test, or kill the breaker they are on.
There is no guarantee anything else beside hardwire will work any better or have issues either, so if you have an investment already I would certainly give it everything I had before getting frustrated and switching it out.
Hang in there, usually these things can be worked out with some persistence.
I had a bad noise problem with UPB once. I had some halogen lights plugged into a UPB lamp module. When I dimmed the lamp module it would dump tons of noise on the line. FInally I got a X10 filter, plug the lights into the filter and the filter into the lamp module. No more noise problem. If you have any lamp modules, especially any CFL or halogens, etc - I'd look at those real hard.
The SA noise filters have not received UL approval yet, so therefore are not available for sale. When they receive UL approval, they will be very public.
UPB is a great technology, and I wouldn't consider ever removing it, but nobody should assume that it will work perfect with absolutely no debugging. In my house I had to use 3 bridges to get the signal up to an acceptable level. I've heard of another case where a PIM had to be used on both phases with a special joining cable to get the signal high enough. Its going to take some time to get all the bugs worked out, especially with the wide diversity of all the things you can plug into a powerline.
Post problems and solutions here, but also contact SA, PCS, or HAI and let them know your problems so they realize the problems.
UPB is a great technology, and I wouldn't consider ever removing it, but nobody should assume that it will work perfect with absolutely no debugging. In my house I had to use 3 bridges to get the signal up to an acceptable level. I've heard of another case where a PIM had to be used on both phases with a special joining cable to get the signal high enough. Its going to take some time to get all the bugs worked out, especially with the wide diversity of all the things you can plug into a powerline.
Post problems and solutions here, but also contact SA, PCS, or HAI and let them know your problems so they realize the problems.
Noise can be a problem when it is in the 4-40 kHz range that UPB uses. Often UPB will work when noise is present ... but sometimes it will not. One problem is that the UPB devices are very polite. The politeness is a collision avoidance scheme that may need better implementation. If a device detects UPB communication... or noise, in the UPB window it will wait from 1 to 15 sine waves and try again. This could go on for a while. Once the noise, or UPB communication, stops the device will send its message.
My experiences with noise and noise sources... have we done this before? Feels like deja vu... Anyway, as was mentinoed earlier, electronic ballasts, electronic power supplies may be running in the frequency range of UPB. They need to be filtered or magnetic ballasts used.
Some CFL purportedly put out nose but I have not seen any yet. I have a hosue full of them, some with electronic ballasts and they are not the source of my noise.
Standard triac controlled dimmers may move their pulse... which looks very similar to UPB... into the UPB window. They usually only get into the UPB window when they are turned down to the point where the load barely glows or appears completely off... not useful light but some folks get into the habit of turning dimmers down but not off.
I have seen an X10 dimmer make noise that affected UPB. I have seen a UPB switch start putting out intermittent noise... that was disconcerting. It had a leaky triac.
Steve's cooktop is like a big triac. It puts out some noise. Panasonic microwave ovens are huge noise makers... but only when they are cooking or defrosting something.
If noise is on both phases it is likely coming in from outside. We currently have no solution for this type of noise but we are working on it. A whole house filter would have to be installed between the meter and the main electrical panel and installed by a licensed electrician.
If nosie is on one phase it is likely to be coming from inside... although in MWhistle's description it sounds like the noise is one one phase of a 3 phase power system.
Sometimes a non-inverting phase coupler can help with external noise. PCS's phase coupler currently offers the highest capacitance.
Yes, I have noise at my house and sometimes it prevents UPB from working. It is intermittent, the worse kind. I believe my noise is coming from outside my house. Sometimes it is present at night, sometimes during the day. I have run a Network Comm Test and I see noise on every other cycle... really strange!! It is on both phases. I have yet to go into my neighbors houses with my laptop and CIM to find the source... I would rather not... but I have good neighbors who would allow me to plug in and check it out... but would they let me put a filter on something? Dunno. I am not happy about the noise and my wife gives me the evil eye... I hate that! The symptom I have is that a light on the other phase will not turn on/off when it should. They always work locally and if I transmit on the same phase I can control them from a switch or UPStart. I do not have a phase coupler... yet. I hope to be testing a prototype soon that will help quench the noise from outside my house.
My experiences with noise and noise sources... have we done this before? Feels like deja vu... Anyway, as was mentinoed earlier, electronic ballasts, electronic power supplies may be running in the frequency range of UPB. They need to be filtered or magnetic ballasts used.
Some CFL purportedly put out nose but I have not seen any yet. I have a hosue full of them, some with electronic ballasts and they are not the source of my noise.
Standard triac controlled dimmers may move their pulse... which looks very similar to UPB... into the UPB window. They usually only get into the UPB window when they are turned down to the point where the load barely glows or appears completely off... not useful light but some folks get into the habit of turning dimmers down but not off.
I have seen an X10 dimmer make noise that affected UPB. I have seen a UPB switch start putting out intermittent noise... that was disconcerting. It had a leaky triac.
Steve's cooktop is like a big triac. It puts out some noise. Panasonic microwave ovens are huge noise makers... but only when they are cooking or defrosting something.
If noise is on both phases it is likely coming in from outside. We currently have no solution for this type of noise but we are working on it. A whole house filter would have to be installed between the meter and the main electrical panel and installed by a licensed electrician.
If nosie is on one phase it is likely to be coming from inside... although in MWhistle's description it sounds like the noise is one one phase of a 3 phase power system.
Sometimes a non-inverting phase coupler can help with external noise. PCS's phase coupler currently offers the highest capacitance.
Yes, I have noise at my house and sometimes it prevents UPB from working. It is intermittent, the worse kind. I believe my noise is coming from outside my house. Sometimes it is present at night, sometimes during the day. I have run a Network Comm Test and I see noise on every other cycle... really strange!! It is on both phases. I have yet to go into my neighbors houses with my laptop and CIM to find the source... I would rather not... but I have good neighbors who would allow me to plug in and check it out... but would they let me put a filter on something? Dunno. I am not happy about the noise and my wife gives me the evil eye... I hate that! The symptom I have is that a light on the other phase will not turn on/off when it should. They always work locally and if I transmit on the same phase I can control them from a switch or UPStart. I do not have a phase coupler... yet. I hope to be testing a prototype soon that will help quench the noise from outside my house.
Appreciate the post from UPBSeer. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I appreciate the candidness of the response. Once the UPB filter/new phase coupler is released, I'll be anxious to test it out in my installation.
In the meantime, I've got the 2 PIM (HS and ML) solution in place as of this Sunday. It works.
In the meantime, I've got the 2 PIM (HS and ML) solution in place as of this Sunday. It works.
AutomatedOutlet
Senior Member
Brad, will the PZZ01 block noise from outside of the house?
Jim Doolittle
Active Member
I have very low noise. UPB and X10 work without phase couplers and repeaters. I suspect that a new transformer may have helped. One of my trees took it out. Power company trimmed my tree (did a decent job and didn't hack it) and replaced transformer. Didn't have any tool for testing noise before so I wonder if that is the reason for my success.
Just for the heck of it, I checked to make sure that all connections in electrical panel were tight (read that here at cocoontech) and none of them needed tightening.
Just for the heck of it, I checked to make sure that all connections in electrical panel were tight (read that here at cocoontech) and none of them needed tightening.
so ya, this is a couple months old, but it's still pertinent.
So I got my 2nd PIM today. I went to hook it up to my main computer via belkin USB adapter, fired up upstart and there was tons of noise. I moved electrical outlets and it made no diff. So I hooked up the usb to my Samsung Q1 just for the heck of it, PIM plugged into the same place and launched upstart, connected to the PIM and bam, no noise!
wth is all that about?
So I got my 2nd PIM today. I went to hook it up to my main computer via belkin USB adapter, fired up upstart and there was tons of noise. I moved electrical outlets and it made no diff. So I hooked up the usb to my Samsung Q1 just for the heck of it, PIM plugged into the same place and launched upstart, connected to the PIM and bam, no noise!
wth is all that about?
I don't know! It does seem a bit odd. What is a Samsung Q1? I did see a bunch of noise when the PIM was hooked up to one of my laptops, but I haven't seen it in a while, and that may roughly correspond to when I disconnected the PIM from the laptop. Would a laptop (charging or being used) put out noise through a serial port?
