W800 RF Problems

[harleydude]

I have reported this trouble before, but found no solution. I have now spent the past couple of days looking into it more. I use X10 palm pads for various macro related control of devices. More times than not I have problems, devices do not respond, they turn off then on or vice versa, etc. I downloaded the W800 32 Bit Decoder and ran some tests. Below is what I found. This is with a brand new palm pad and brand new batteries.

Anyone have any ideas?

Rick

 

[electron]

Which part are you worried about, the corrupt packets? I have seen those as well, but they were part of a normal RF transmission, and things did work fine. Any chance you have a bad W800RF, or something is interfering?

 

[harleydude]

I used the device with HS for over a year without much issue. The biggest problem I have seen is devices not responding and the device turning off then back on. Really frustrating having to push the button multiple times to get the device to respond properly. I have not ruled out the possibility of a bad unit, have checked the cable going to the antenna in the attic and it looks fine. Even climbed in the attic and tried the remote from about 5' from the antenna same results.

Rick

 

[b_weijenberg]

I have seen this type of errors before and if you are using an RS232-USB converter then this may cause the errors.

Bert

 

[ver0776]

I have seen this type of errors before and if you are using an RS232-USB converter then this may cause the errors.

Bert

I second this. I bought the USB adapter directly from WGL because I figured they would have tested it or something. It caused some of the bits to change up though. Normal X10 stuff seemed to work ok, but all of my security stuff had their codes changed.

I also got this error when first adding in a PCI serial port, but I think it went away after moving it to a port that did not share an interrupt.

I wish I would have done better testing and logging of the issue, but once I got it to work, I praised Jesus and did not touch it again. (just a few weeks back the last time this happened)

Did you change com ports recently?

Vaughn

 

[harleydude]

The device is normally connected to my Elk, I just connected it to the computer for testing. I sent an email to WGL for further info, they suggested that I move it farther from my computer. So now it is in one of my Elk cans hopefully more protected from interference.

Rick