Bye Bye LD-11

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It's served me reasonably well for a couple of years but my last LD-11 has just been removed. It's funny really, I thought that dimmable lighting on the (unlit) stairs would be a good idea, bright during the day, trending to almost nothing at night for those middle of the night bathroom trips.

A ideal application for the Cortex scene object, but I needed a DIN rail mounting dimmer and the Idratek one was not available. So LD-11s were pressed into service. The response time wasn't as good as directly connected Idratek modules and my fancy scene scheme was completely rejected: night had to be completely unlit, just as God intended when he gave this planet one sun and 1000mph rotation, apparently. Despite this, the LD-11 remained, partly through laziness and partly because I liked the soft start. Not quite so startling first thing in the morning, I guess.

But over the last few months I have had X-10 woes. Occasional delays in lighting, implying lost packets, and complete CM11u lockups, requiring a trip to the loft. Always last thing at night, it seemed. It also seemed to be getting worse, even after replacing my CM11. Finally, after nearly falling down the (unlit) stairs during another CM11 hissy fit, I finally snapped and ripped it out. The stairs lights are back on a relay for the moment. Yes, I could fart around with a plug-in filter trying to identify any source of main interference, but really it's just not worth it, and I suspect the cause may be external anyway, since not much new equipment has come into the house coinciding with the problem.

An SLD is a distinct possibility, but I need to confirm they will work with the latest CFLs given the apparent political will to ban incandescent bulbs. And X-10 lives on for controlling side lights, at least until there is a viable alternative.

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This page contains a single entry by David published on September 4, 2007 1:13 AM.

Colour coding of connections items was the previous entry in this blog.

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