I’ve talked a bit about this subject before, but with a new experience under the belt, I thought I might add to the collective knowledge out there.

I recently (week or two ago) installed a 12V track light system that obviously uses a transformer (in this case, electric) to step down the standard 110V household current to 12V. It’s not on the same circuit as my TED, or even the same phase, but immediately when turning on the lights, my TED signal drops to 0. It must be that this transformer is putting out so much noise on the system, that it’s going all the way to the transformer at the street, and then back along the second phase. Really, no idea.

Anyway, after discovering I couldn’t move it to a different phase, I started looking at filtering options to remove all the noise it was causing on my power system. At first I thought I would just filter the offending light, and looked at X10 XPNR‘s which seem like they’re added to the offending device, and remove the noise. But THEN, I stumbled upon this! Holy cow, an actual “official” solution. And while they have them for less than $10, shipping was almost as much as the product itself. So, I went back to my trusty supplier, and got one here, for a total of $16 with shipping. When it arrived late last week, I was a bit surprised by it’s size. Yes, it says how big it is, but you don’t quite get that until you have it. It’s pretty darn big. But, using the directions posted on the TED site, I was able to wire it in (using pigtails for the red and white wires, since all three wires were far too short), and fit it in my breaker box. And afterward? TED works like a charm. I’d imagine my actual signal reliability will be higher with the filter since everything else in the house is no longer causing dropouts. The only other thing I could do would be to create a REALLY dedicated circuit for the whole TED, but that just seems excessive. Maybe if I upgrade to a 5000 I can put it all on it’s own circuit.

I’m approaching another year with the TED, so I’ll be posting back for the new year with new numbers comparing to last year, analyzing this year, etc. Stay tuned!