okay, well i went out and bought all this stuff, and installed two leviton hcm10-1sw's and two slaves, they all work fine manually. i plugged in the ir543, but only one of the switches responds. on top of that though, the one that does respond, only turns on and off. it won't dim or brighten. and this is from the ir543 itself.

okay, a little more info, the leviton's require you to drepress a little button to "learn" the house code or whatever. well i can only seem to get one of them to work. and i'm not sure i'm even doing it right.

first off i have to say the documentation with all this stuff is pathetic. sorry, but i'm a little frustrated. am i doing something wrong?

i got my sony rm-av3000 remote set to the right x10 code, but all it does is turn on and off the one bank of lights.

i'm having the biggest case of buyers remorse ever, especially since i paid slightly more than online to buy the stuff on friday so i could have it over the weekend. we've got a beautiful new basement and i thought this would be the cherry on top, but it's burning out to be kind of junky.

can someone out there help me?

okay, sorry for the rant, i think i figured most of it out, it turns out, the ir543 will only work correctly plugged into one outlet in my entire basement. not ideal, but luckily i can stash the ir543 under an end-table. i have a a couple final questions though

1. the lights on the new leviton dimmers are not as bright as they once were. in other words, when on full brightness, they are not as bright as the same light in another room. (i am not imagining it either) is this a problem, or have i done something wrong? can it be fixed?

2. what do i need to do to program my rm-av3000 more specific lighting functions, other than what is pre-programmed now?

thanks in advance for the reply

As for your first post, sounds like you have signal problems, You may need filters on some noisy devices in your home. Try unplugging things like tv's power strips, computers and such and see if the IR-543 works in the other outlets.

1. As far as I know all lights work slightly dimmer when run on a dimmer.

2. What does or does not work with the remote? Can that model remote learn?

i'm still very very frustrated. i thought i had found an outlet that works, but it doesn't work all the time which i just learned this morning. i went to turn everything off downstairs including the lights and nothing happened. the ir543 is getting the signal from then sony, but nothing happens. i'm really pretty upset. the whole thing about filters to me is out of the question. i have a ton of electronics, bigscreen tv's, components, computers, etc. all over my house. i'm not going to go around unplugging stuff just so my x10 lights will work. you can't tell me i'm the first person out there to have this kind of problem. there's only one outlet in my entire downstairs that seems to work flawlessly 100% of the time, and that's a gfi home run outlet in the bathroom.

why would it work in an outlet one day and not the next? i am not going to go out and buy a bunch of filters and stuff, there's got to be a better solution. any advice or suggestions (besides pluking down a bunch more money) would be greatly appreciated.

There is only one way X10 works reliably, with a good signal and low noise. It sure sounds like you have noise and your only solution is to filter, or eliminate the device causing the noise. If you don't want to do that, PLC power line carrier (X10’s technology) is not for you, but the non PLC products get real expensive. Do you self a favor and plunk down $50 on a test meter (ELK-ESM1) and figure out what is causing the noise. You ca also find out if you need a coupler (the good signal part of the equation). This or trial and error of figuring out what is off when it does work and on when it doesn’t is the only way you are going to solve your problem.

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com

this may not be much help but...have you tried another IR543? i, too, had a flakey "system" that would work fine one day and not work the next. i ordered another ir543 and i was right. everything worked fine with the new unit. i returned the bad unit to x10 for a replacement and now i have a spare. a new IR543 will only set you back a few bucks. good luck.

I'll second that. This is the basic requirement for any communications system to work properly.

ugh......so hey Bill, does it help that I figured out that when the dryer is running the ir543 works in a particular outlet? but when it's off it doesn't. as mentioned before i have so much gear that it would be practically impossible to go around and test stuff. are filters expensive? could i possibly find an outlet upstairs that works and use an RF transmitter like the leapfrog or something?

If it works when the dryer is on, but does not work when the dryer is off, it sounds like you just need a signal coupler to connect your two 120v legs together. Smarthome makes one that plugs into your dryer socket as well as ones that you hard wire into your electrical panel. Others probably have better specific advice as I don't have any in my home yet (but I need one also).

The dryer units work, but this is not the best place to put a coupler. The problem with passive couplers is when you start out with 3V signals and then send it down the line it just keeps getting weaker. Every path to neutral that it finds drains a little of the signal strength. Then you add a passive coupler to the mix and it does allow the signal to pass to the other phase, but at the same time it gives it all the additional paths to dissipate. This extra dissipation causes the second phase to increase strength at the expense of the strength of the first phase. In a lot of homes there is still sufficient signal left to operate the X10 module, but it's always on the edge. So we don't bother with passive couplers on any installs, and I do not recommend them to anyone that wants their automation system to be reliable unless they are really budget constrained. The coupler repeater takes what ever signal is left on the sending leg, looks it up and resends it out on both legs at 5-6 volts, which compensates for a lot of other problems like noise. The passive couplers work and are fine sometimes but the margin a coupler repeater gives you is just worth the extra expense.

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com

Bill,
Smarthome also makes a coupler/repeater that plugs into the dryer outlet. Is that a better choice? Like I said in my earlier post, I don't have a coupler yet, but I need one. I don't want to mess with my electrical panel (not that brave) and I don't want to hire an electrician to do it either (cheap). I think I can sport the $100 for the plug-in coupler/repeater if they work well.

Get with me Monday I will get you a SH plug in at a great price. I got a bunch of them, that cam in in kits that we bought. It is better than nothing but not as good as a good repeater.

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com

Hey Bill, I'd be interested in one of those as well, how much are we talking about? How do I contact you?

List is $49, I think the hot deal is around $29 so $20 would be fine Email me or call me Monday if interested, we have quite a few.

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com