From: Bill Husler <BHusler-AT-PacBell.net>
Date: 11 May 2008 20:29:48 UTC   (02:29:48 PM in author's locale)
To: xtensionlist-AT-shed.com

I think this is an important point - the ACK is simply the CM11
telling the computer it got the command is will do it's best. It's
nothing to do with the actual appliance module. One thing that sounds
significant is that Chuck reported in his first post that there was a
15 sec delay in receiving the ACK - that seems to support the theory
that some device has gone berserk and is jamming the power-line with
signals that the CM11 is trying to process. Would these signals need
to look like valid X-10 traffic to the CM11 in order for it to get so
distracted or could it just be a very high noise level?
Bill

On May 11, 2008, at 12:21 PM, James Sentman wrote:

>
> On May 11, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Chuck Pelto wrote:
>
>> I've come to realize that the Ack is not all it QuAcked up to be. A
>> question for Michael is what can we do to REALLY validate the 'Ack'?
>
> the ack is form the software meaning that it thinks that the
> hardware device accepted or acknowledged the signal. It will tell
> you that the communications between the device and computer are
> probably working OK but can't really tell you about the state of the
> powerlines. Devices like the Lynx had an internal buffer and would
> ack that they got the packet before even trying to send them, or at
> least that is my memory. But the CM11 wont send an ack until it
> thinks that it's sent it. But that doesn't mean that it's sent it in
> a way that anybody else can understand.
>
> So not getting an ack is a good indication of a problem, but getting
> an ack is no promise of proper transmission.
>
> Something has changed in your house, some power supply capacitor has
> blown it's top or some power supply has heated up to the point of
> causing problems. The fact that sometimes you get an ack and
> sometimes not even with trying a spare CM11 means that something is
> confusing the poor thing. You're going to have to do zone by zone
> switching off of things to narrow it down I fear. Unless people can
> give you some other better ideas that don't immediately occur to me.
>
> Thanks,
> James
>
>
> James Sentman sentman.com MacHomeAutomation.com
>
>
>