I have in the past periodically gotten sporadic transmissions of "B9/Bright" on my system as recorded on the Ocelot X-10 monitor screen. Since I don't use "B" House code, I have ignored it.

Today, the power company replaced a pole in my back yard that has the power transformer on it that feeds 4 houses and two street lights. They disconnected everything, moved the same old transformer to the new pole and reconnected everything.

Now, with the power back on I get two things. The "B9/Bright" X-10 signal is transmitted every minute at 5 seconds past the minute (on my computer clock, which may be off a bit). I can't imagine what could be generating that signal in the first place, and what could be generating it at precisely the same time every minute, and why it changed with the repair work.

It's now become an issue since it will cause collisions with my other X-10 activity.

I'm also reading residual noise on the line lighting the first bar on my Elk meter.

Anyone got any ideas?

What power company? Have you asked them whether they are doing something that is causing this? I recall similar reports from certain parts of the US. In one case, it was a rural area with only one house on the transformer. IIRC, the codes reported were the same.

[Link: google.com]

Refer to the posts from Carlos Rodriguez and Dan Wright.

Does the ESM1 "GOOD X10" LED light for this code?

Some utilities use the grid for communication, remote meter reading, etc. Some are also starting to offer broadband Internet over the grid.

This message was edited by Dave Houston on 03/31/04 17:56.

Dave:

Thanks. This gives me some things to investigate. I moved the plug of the Elk meter to another socket (same circuit) and the light went out. There is an X-10 appliance module plugged into the other socket also. There shouldn't be any difference, but what I was reading as background noise went away with the change in sockets.

The frequency of the B9/Bright signals has slowed some, now not every minute. Yes, the X-10 "good" light lights up with the transmissions and the bar graph indicates about 1v. Sometimes there will be two of these transmissions together, sometimes as many as eight. I can't imagine anything I have in the house that would be generating them. Any, they are two weird in spacing to come from a neighbor, I think.

The power company is Omaha Public Power District. I can't imagine a power company of this size using anything X-10 related for anything.

Deane

Wow Dave, that's a bizzare thread you provided the link to. Several different people in different parts of the country experiencing my precise problem. Same House/unit code, same pattern. Bizzare is all I can say.

I didn't see that they came to any resolution.

I don't have a CM11A in service (it's safely in a box), but my Ocelot is connected to the powerline with a PSC05.

Somehow, after reading their identical issues, I am wondering about some common piece of gear connected to the power line that we all own.

Deane

It doesn't have to be X-10 related. The power companies all over the world have used the grids for communications and other purposes for more than 75 years. (It's probably where X-10 got the idea.) Their systems are called Ripple Control. Earlier systems used lower carriers than the 120kHz used by X-10 but there are some new systems from Europe that use higer carriers. Utilities may use it for load management. It may just be that they're using something that your X-10 receivers interpret as X-10.

I've seen reports of mysterious B9/B Bright codes from the east coast, west coast, and now from Nebraska.

If it happened to be related to something the power company used for testing or whatever, it might be possible that the reason for a tranmission precisely every minute following restoration of our power had to do with communications regarding that restoration. It has slowed to "normal" now which would lend further credence to that theory.

This B9/Bright thing has got to be something common to either multiple power companies, or to some device each of us owns in common.

I can tell you that more and more meters are being replaced with electronic meters that can be remotely read, and there may indeed be other signals, like some sort of telemetry, being sent oner the power lines and/or via RF. For years, the power co. has been controlling electric water heaters, too.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

Load management is sure to require higher bit rates than the older audio frequency carriers used with Ripple Control. The newer systems use 5-500kHz but I haven't found any detailed specifications on any of the newer systems in use in the US.

There's a Radio Ripple system that uses 129-131kHz but, as far as I know, it doesn't use the power grid.