I think we're onto something with this thread gentleman. I hope we can keep it going as we have reason to believe that the UPB guys are tuned in. I'll add my 2 cents.
Occasionally, on Friday and Saturday nights between the hours of 8pm-ish and 2am-ish, I hit off the charts noise on one-phase of my powerline. The noise is so severe I lose cross phase powerline communications. Signal level is high, but not enough to power-through the noise.
I am as certain as I can be that this noise in not generated in my home, having gone through all the usual troubleshooting techniques. I live in Austin - right in the heart of the 6th Street district - and believe my humble abode shares a transformer with many of the live music clubs nearby. My theory is that some AV equipment that the bands may use is the source of this excessive noise. It doesn't happen every weekend, but when it does, it's always between the hours of 8pm and 3am (the bars close here at 2am). I have watched this phenomenon carefully over the last 7 months that I've had UPB installed.
Other background items:
1. I have a 3-phase residential PIM. For those of you unfamiliar, this PIM is wired directly into each phase at the breaker box and serially connects direct to a PC.
2. During the noisy period, keypads on the noisy phase have a strong enough signal to overcome the noise and communicate successfully to all devices on that phase (but not to devices on the other zero noise phase)
3. During the noisy period, if I install a separate PIM directly on the noisy phase, the signal is strong enough to overcome the noise and communicate successfully to all devices on that phase (but not to devices on the other, zero noise phase).
4. During the noisy period, x10 communications are successful to all phases.
5. I have 2 ACT AF120 15amp filters on the noisy phase. From Upstart I can clearly see that they attentuate the noise to some degree, but not enough to make a difference.
While this is frustrating, I have no intentions of giving up on UPB. Just too happy with it. It would be terrific to have some way for UPB to overcome this issue, but in the meantime, I have a workaround plan of attack (for computer control, does not address standlone UPB).
2 PIMS.
As a given, No. 3 above (a separate PIM on the noisy phase works fine).
One workhorse, everyday PIM, and one dedicated to the noisy phase during potential problem times.
Since I run both HomeSeer and MLServer, I should be able to run 2 PIMS off separate serial ports serving the two different applications. HomeSeer will keep the everyday workhorse PIM, and the 2nd, backup PIM will be assigned to MLServer.
So, the gist is, during Friday and Saturday nights, HomeSeer will instruct MLServer to execute backup UPB commands to the noisy phase through its own dedicated PIM that's installed on the noisy phase.
It's a hack, but it should work. Cinemar released their UPB driver in the wee hours this morning, so I should be able to test the concept later today.