[rant] Lights with a mind of their own.

Well. To start, there's my front-porch light. The light is switched with an X-10 module that's gone over to the other side. Now when it's on, it grows bright and dark every few seconds, in a good imitation of my wife's Apple Powerbook's LED standby-mode breathing pattern. I kind of admire the show, but the neighbors are making remarks to us about it. So that's on the list.

Meanwhile my Western Digital MyBook World NAS backup drive lights up with a bank of white LEDs, as it tries, and fails, to emulate a Powerbook. My wife complains of the errant changing light interfering with her sleep, so I turned it around and close my study door at night. I considered all the poorly-designed LED breathing indicators, and imagine a design drawing power from the LED pins and inoffensively lighting a new LED, much like my wife's laptop. That's also on the list.

Kaack! Now my Genie garage-door opener is acting up, first its incandescent light that kindly comes on for 20 seconds every time you open or close the garage door, decides it'll stay on all the time. My wife tells me that it hasn't gone off in days. I'm busy 24-7 working on the book, so I told her to cycle its power: turn the circuit breaker off and back on again. She does this. Now the garage door opener still works fine, but its light stays _off_ all the time. Sigh. I really don't want to put this on my list.

The last time it was our Casablanca ceiling fan. It also played games with its lamp, and its motor as well, going into various weird modes. That was a failed storage capacitor, and it cost me a day to take the fan apart, trace the circuit, and find it. Yes, it saved hundreds of dollars buying a new fancy fan, but who has the time? I mean, the book!

Anybody can help with the Genie, much appreciated!

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 Thanks,
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill
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Replace it with a Liftmaster... I did.

As for the funny functioning, they do seem to need rebooting... cut the power at the breaker.

Likewise the Casablanca... maybe that's a "fan flu" making the rounds... the one in my office went flaky last week. Finally push-started it with a broom handle, seems OK now ;-)

Cold weather seems to make a lot of the CFL controls do weirdness and winking :-( ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

I would use a motion sensor light and set it for one, five or ten minutes. I use a lot of them, becasue of my health problems. Just don't try one in a bedroom. Just breathing can turn on the lights, while you're asleep. :(

There is a small AC electrolytic in your ceiling fan. It is a common failure item. Home Depot, lowe's and other places carry the common values.

An open neutral from the power company can cause all kinds of wierd problems.

--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Diverging here, but what is the structural difference between AC and DC lytics? And is that in the new edition book?

Glad to see you back here, Dr Hill.

If you have two or more synchronous failures, like the fan/light combo, I'd take a hard look at the earthing/neutral of the building and hang a power line monitor on the AC, 8 years at the university taught me that multiple failures, close together in time is not coincidental.. Either a supply transformer, or a rare bad connection, is possibly spiking the line...

Yeah, I'm paranoid, but I did not survive 8 years of working in Grad School lab with wet chemistry, hot ovens, lasers, hydrogen tanks, and HV by being complacent and trusting. :-)

Steve

Reply to
osr

If they're made the way they used to be made, the Genie circuit board isn't protected against insects and relays are so grossly underrated that the contacts fry. There's a good chance that you can fix both by whacking the opener very hard with a screwdriver handle.

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I won't see Google Groups replies because I must filter them as spam
Reply to
Kevin McMurtrie

AC, or non polar electrolytics are basically two DC electrolyitics in series, effectively two negatives tied together, and the two positive leads used to connect it into a circuit. Cornell Dubiller used to have a good description of their construction & operation in their printed catalog. I'm having problems with this computer, and can't access a lot of sites tonight.

The reverse biased capacitor acts like a diode, and each capacitor works on one half of the AC waveform.

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Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I can reproduce that issue by pressing the square button on my 'wall console'. The light remains on. If I cycle power to the opener with the light on, it will revert to a 'light off' condition as soon as power is restored.

I think your light bulb filament is now open, explaining the 'excessive dark' symptom you mentioned.

Further info from Genie:

1-800-849-3998(U.S.)
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Thank you Dr. Hill for _Art of Electronics_!

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

On a sunny day (7 Apr 2010 17:32:09 -0700) it happened Winfield Hill wrote in :

Eh, my Seagate 1 TB external harddisk has a white LED that slowly goes on and off when it is in use, the LED is behind an ugly pattern of holes. I took an old floppy write protect label, and covered most of the holes.

For the lights I my bedroom use LED strips and a PIC controller:

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It has timers too, and switches on / off lights at any time you want in any color you want. It an be driven from a PC via RS232 and can do disco light too. I use these RGB LED strips. ftp://panteltje.com/pub/col_pic/RGB_LED_strip_img0906.jpg So.. all solid state,

Probably faster to make your own PIC LED light system than drive to a shop and buy something. You can use the source code, it is GPL.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Why don't you turn it off at night?

Ah. That's why. Sadly I don't have the opportunity to design electronics any more (I've crossed to the other side -- semi manufacturing) but I'll buy that book at the first opportunity. Maybe as a substitute.

What? You've been reading this? Go back to work!

robert

Reply to
Robert Latest

X10 is a pain in the neck. Poor protocol and IMHO poor quality. Many times a module has decided to runs its own little erratic timing sequences.

The MyBook World here has a ring which can only light in the color blue and it only blinks when accessed, usually. Otherwise it's on steady.

Same happened with one of the Genie screw drives here. "Why is the garage lit in the middle of the night?". A relay had developed a "growth" on one contact. I gently sand-papered that away and it's working again for years. However, I didn't want to do that standing on the ladder so I removed the board with the relays on there, popped the dust cap and fixed it. Don't forget to unplug the thing first.

We are all waiting on the next AoE edition, so be careful on that ladder :-)

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
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Reply to
Joerg

For inclusion in Vol 2 AoE: "X-10 protocol is shit"

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Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
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Reply to
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax

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