How can I MAKE a super signal sucker?

Posted on
Mon Oct 03, 2016 7:28 am
johnpolasek offline
Posts: 911
Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Location: Aggieland, Texas

How can I MAKE a super signal sucker?

I've read a lot of posts about finding and eliminating signal suckers and noise generators, but my problem at my mother's house is that I apparently have a super noise generator that I can't get rid of; I put in a very large (initally X10-XTENsion, later updated to insteon/Indigo) system to control the lights in the barn and external lamp posts at her place 30 years ago, which worked fairly well until she put in a 5 hp variable frequency drive water well pump last year, at which time the system became nonresponsive for everything outside the house. After playing with all sorts of other possibilities (we were replacing a lot of fluorescent tubes and HP sodium lights with LEDs in the same time frame) I finally isolated it to things worked when the pump was not running and didn't when the pump was on. It's a 22 amp 220 v device with a 30 amp starting surge 50 yards out from the central power pole that all the insteon signals have to pass through (which is why I have a phase bridge and insteon light switch at the power pole) . After I identified it, I tried putting a pair of X10 bypass filters at the pump controller without effect, and all the inline filterlincs are 110v and have a current limit of 20 amps; I'm not about to kludge 4 of them in series parallel to get the rating I need, which was the best solution that the folks at Smarthome could come up with. And we can't get along without the pump, and the 100 yards from the house to the power pole and 75 from the power pole to the barn are well beyond the reach of Z-wave or Insteon RF (not to mention that the lampposts require putting the control modules inside a grounded steel pipe which makes any RF technology moot).... So does anyone know what it would take to eat up all the noise that the controller must be generating? Nothing in the pumphouse really needs to be remotely controlled.

Posted on
Mon Oct 03, 2016 8:34 am
jay (support) offline
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Posts: 18199
Joined: Mar 19, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas

Re: How can I MAKE a super signal sucker?

JV Digital Engineering specializes in X10 and related hardware, including noise reducers/filters. If there is a solution out there, I'd expect them to be the place to find it.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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