On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 11:50:14 -0500, "R. Gregg Reed"
wrote:

My landlord is having a problem with this thing. You're supposed to
replace all your outlets and wall switches with control modules, then
you can operate any electrical equipment in your house remotely or on
a schedule. The manual is sketchy, but it looks like the control
center sends a 2.4 ghz signal through the house wires that operate
the control modules. It works somewhat, but it screws some things up.
Like it will manually dim a light, until it goes all the way off, but
then it won't come back on again.

We have an ISP across the street that broadcasts a wireless internet
signal at 2.4 ghz. Could that be causing problems?

The model number of this device is 61-2470. Thanks.

thats an X10 device. X10 is notorious for requiring very clean power
lines for it to work properly. That just about means plug-in filters
for anything electronic in your house. Well, maybe not that bad, but I
have filters on all my computers and monitors, TV, audio amp,
subwoofer, even the stove with its microprocessor. Operation was
really erratic until I did all this...

I guess even before you do the filtering is to check that the
transmitter is on the same powerline phase as the receiver. the X10
signal wont hop phases. You may get it to work sometimes but operation
will be very erratic. If they're on different phases, you may need to
buy a phase coupler. www.smarthome.com is a good place for all this
stuff.

Radio Shack kind of lures people into buying this stuff but never
mentions that it takes a lot more time and effort to clean your power
line to make it operate reliably. For simple systems it may work
fine, but usually it doesnt unless you spend a lot more.

BTW, x10 works on a 120kHz carrier, not 2.4GHz, if your interested
here's a link explaining it:
http://www.x10.com/support/technology1.htm

This website is also a good site to buy modules and other X10 devices
but watch out for their email spam.

dickm