trouble with 1132CU

I'm trying to transition off an old serial X10 control tethered to a linux box to Indigo on my dual g4 workstation with a 1132CU usb interface. The old X10 interface works great and is 99% reliable. When we moved into our new house 3 years ago, I had trouble with signals reaching both legs of our house's wiring. I installed a repeater in the breaker box and that solved all the problems.

However, with the new 1132CU, I can't get very good performance at all. Here's my test case. I have two lamps set to the same housecode/number. One is in another room on the other end of the house. One is in the room with the mac and 1132CU. Using the 1132CU to issue commands, only the lamp in the same room responds. Using an X10 remote (and receiver in a third room), both lamps respond to all commands.

The 1132CU is plugged into the wall outlet and a UPS for the Mac is plugged into the 1132CU. Could it be sucking up the signal, making it too weak to propagate to the rest of the house (but still strong enough to trigger the lamp box in the same room)? Should I use a filter between the 1132CU and the UPS? I was thinking of trying the filterlinc (http://www.smarthome.com/1626.html) -- might that solve the problem?

I'm really looking forward to moving to Indigo. My old setup was pretty braindead with simple hard-coded on/off scheduling for lights. Building smarter responses with triggers and sunrise/sunset timings looks great, but I'm pretty much dead in the water until I can get this 1132CU working reliably.

thanks,
jay

UPS systems are notorious for sucking up X10 signals. Having it plugged directly into the 1132CU is almost a guarantee for failure. A filterlinc between the two should do the trick.

[matt (support)]

Hello Jay,

The 1132CU is plugged into the wall outlet and a UPS for the Mac is plugged into the 1132CU. Could it be sucking up the signal, making it too weak to propagate to the rest of the house (but still strong enough to trigger the lamp box in the same room)? Should I use a filter between the 1132CU and the UPS?

Yes, it could very well be your UPS. UPSs and high-end surge protector strips are notorious for sucking X10 signals. I would suggest plugging the UPS into a FilterLinc. You might first try plugging your PowerLinc into a different outlet. The UPS still might cause signal problems, but it might improve some. Additionally, for troubleshooting purposes, you could try unplugging the UPS (just plug your computer monitor directly into the outlet or a basic power strip).

Regards,
Matt

Yup, the FilterLinc fixed it. Thanks for the advice.

jay