[Hai-users] Problem with ALC lighting on OmniPro II

[Dan Butterfield]

I recently added some ALC lights (wired via cat-5 to an OmniPro II), and am 
experiencing some odd lighting behavior.  The lights will periodically 
spontaneously turn on or off (primarily off).  This happens when no other 
activity is occurring in the OmniPro II (e.g. no one is turning lights on or 
off, and no timed events are triggering), and is random and unpredictable. 
It typically is the case of a light turning off some minutes or hours after 
manually turning it on.  It occurs with different lights in the house, so 
doesn't seem to be tied to one switch.

I am going to start trouble shooting this by disconnecting different 
switches from the OmniPro II to see if some switch is injecting commands 
into the system in some way, although with the infrequent intermittent 
nature of the problem, it'll be a long slow process of elimination.  I have 
tried to eliminate all programming that references lights, to try to take 
some kind of programming error out of the equation.  However, has anyone 
ever encountered this kind of behavior before?  Could bad connections to the 
switches cause this?  Is cat-5 sufficient for ALC signalling, or is it 
possibile I am picking up some interference?

I have definately seen this kind of behavior from X-10 switches, and kind of 
expect it there, but was surprised to see it in an ALC system.  I had hoped 
it would be more reliable!  I have a bunch more switches to install, but am 
holding up because of this problem.