Leviton 6299 failure symptoms?

[doa70]

Anyone had a 6299 bridge fail and can explain some of the symptoms they saw? I suddenly had two lamp modules no longer respond to Homeseer, an outside light that turns on but not off, all different device codes on the same house code. I tried plugging in an eight device remote and none of my X10 devices respond to it. That rules out the CM11A and the PC. I swapped out a few of the lamp modules so I've ruled those out as well. Sometimes I can get one of the problem modules to work for a few minutes, then nothing. This in an X10 system I've used for a dozen years with no issues. One last thing I did was plug in my ELK-1 signal strength tester to the outlets where one of the problem modules was and I'm only getting two bars - somewhere between .1V and 1V - it's not exactly clear looking at it what two bars indicates. If I plug the tester into the pass through on the CM11A I get all bars list - 5V I believe that is. So I think I've ruled out everything except for the 6299 bridge at this point. Am I on the right track here? Thanks in advance!

[Dave W]

One last thing I did was plug in my ELK-1 signal strength tester to the outlets where one of the problem modules was and I'm only getting two bars - somewhere between .1V and 1V - it's not exactly clear looking at it what two bars indicates. Am I on the right track here?

The 6299 is purley passive, so failure is likely to be a slow degradation, or a quick out and out failure from nasty voltage spike. Any voltage spike (i.e. close by lightning) of sufficient strength to damage the 6299 is likely to have caused other identifyable damage to other home electronics. You do not specify whether the two bars on the ELK are constant or only during X10 commands. You could have a new noise source. CFL bulbs can become noisey in the X10 signal spectrum as they age. Otherwise, what new gizmo have you plugged in, or what gizmo have you moved from one outlet to another. My bet is with a noise source and not a failure of the coupler.

[doa70]

The 6299 is purley passive, so failure is likely to be a slow degradation, or a quick out and out failure from nasty voltage spike. Any voltage spike (i.e. close by lightning) of sufficient strength to damage the 6299 is likely to have caused other identifyable damage to other home electronics. You do not specify whether the two bars on the ELK are constant or only during X10 commands. You could have a new noise source. CFL bulbs can become noisey in the X10 signal spectrum as they age. Otherwise, what new gizmo have you plugged in, or what gizmo have you moved from one outlet to another. My bet is with a noise source and not a failure of the coupler.

Thanks Dave. I really thought hard over the past couple of weeks and couldn't come up with anything new that was plugged in. As for the ELK, the bars are only there when I send an X10 signal - I see no signs of noise, constant or random (at least for the 10 - 15 mins I had the meter plugged in and in my direct line of sight). I'm going to keep at it while in parallel I'm getting up to speed with HS2 and I'm starting to play with a couple of zwave devices.

*** Updated ***

So I went and turned off the breaker for the 6299 - all lights are back to working so far.