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Hi,

I've replaced my 'klik aan, klik uit' system with XANURA dax10 modules. Since then I'm experiencing 'flickering' lights. I can't imagine this is due to lack of quality of the electronics. I suppose XANURA is superior to 'klik aan, klik uit'.

What can I do?

Thank you,
Remco.

Mines do that too! Not all of them though. At first I thought there was some correlation between the flickering and the load because only the modules controlling a 40 Watt lightbulb suffered from this problem. But now I've seen a unit with a load of 80 Watt flicker too.

Probably a triac that only fires at one half of the power sine wave. This can be caused by firing at the wrong moment (due to inductive load) or a too low drive current for the triac gate.
Do those units have connections for both 220V power rails and the load, or only one and the load?

Han Alink

I haven't had problems with inductive loads yet. My problems occur with 40 Watt light bulbs, strickly resistive. I don't know what you mean with to ask with about the connection, but it has two neutral terminals (inter-connected internally), a live terminal and a load terminal.

The problem seems to occur at a combination of a light load at low intensities, but it is specified for loads from 25 Watt to 250 Watt. With this specification, in my opinion, it's perfectly normal to assume that the unit is capable of dimming loads down to 25 Watt.

Refering to http://www.act-solutions.com/kingery.htm, see the difference between figure 3 and 6. Marmitek AM12 or AW12 are "figure 3" types; they need a minimal load( about 40W) to be able to operate. Devices wih use both neutral and live terminal for powering the internal electronics do not have this limitation.
By the way: did you manage to get the Microchip X10 design working?

Han Alink

Aha, now I see what you meant with your question. Even though the answer was already in my previous post, please allow me to be explicit in the answer: Xanura DAIX10 modules power themselves through both live and neutral line (instead of powering themselves through their load).

The Marmitek AW12 seems identical to the Xanura DAIX10 module, so their specifications should be the same. But the load I'm experiencing problems with meets is a 40 Watt (resistive) light bulb, so it meets both specifications. Besides that, my bedroom ceiling light contains two of these bulbs (in parallel, of cource) and has this problem too. It think it's pretty safe to assume rule out the wattage of the load.

Having my experience with the quality of the Xanura modules fresh in mind, I fear the problem is in this area...

BTW. I haven't had any time yet to get the PIC design working, but I may have some more time in the near future. In the mean time I can concur with Pieter's opinion on the Xanura ZAX module. Don't buy it, it's crap.

I have the same problem.

Is it possible to return these units (warranty)?
If not, can you look at the triac gate pulses with an osciloscope or send a defective unit to me, so I can do that?



Han Alink

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Han</i>
<br />Is it possible to return these units (warranty)?
If not, can you look at the triac gate pulses with an osciloscope or send a defective unit to me, so I can do that?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Possibly, but if they are really defective the number of dead-on-arrival units would be raised to 7 out of 35, or 20%! Many units are built into very tiny spaces with many leads and sometimes even an interconnect: It took me hours to get them in and I don't want to go through that again! The 90 Euro price of the unit is nothing compared to the labour of building in these units. Surely Eaton is willing to replace the units, but I'm not willing to start over again building in this crap. So I've just decided to cut my loss and learn to live with it.

I'm not going to measure anything in these units: <i>If</i> I'm going to take them out, I'll crush them under my heel and toss'em into the bin. I bought 'professional quality' units to prevent endless measuring and hobbying until it works. If I wanted that, I would have bought hobby components. I'm <b>very</b> disappointed (see: /topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=66)

Remco,

dit is veel voorkomend, met allerlei soorten dimmers, dus ook xanura
in mijn geval loste het op door de 3x 60W lampen te vervangen door 3x 40W
je moet gewoon het vermogen naar beneden gooien.