Bad Luck With The Turnstile Antenna

[jeanv]

The W800 and the antenna that it came with seem to be working great in my attic of my 2 story home. I have taken the batteries out of every single RF transmitter, motion sensor, any thing that the w800 can read. I get no signals as expected with the very detailed logging on.

About once every 2 - 3 hours I get one corrupt tansmission message in the w800 log (With very high details logging on)

I decided to build the old c. Once I finished assebling the turnstile antenna I placed it in my attic next the the factory default little antenna and connected the coax that used to go to the factory default little antenna to the new Dave Huston turnstile antenna.

Well when I went to the homeseer log, I was now getting a corrupt RF Transmission every 2 seconds!!! I went back into the attic and reconnected the the factory default little antenna and the homeseer log of the w800 is quiet again.

Where could I have screwed up with the the factory default little antenna?

The range with the factory default little antenna is just fine (well over the perimetr of my house... I got about 4 houses away before I decided this was far enough)

I am curious why min fails when everyone else seems to love the turnstile antenna.

[Oman]

It is quite possible that you did nothing wrong. At some point you just start picking up too much garbage. The good news is that usually the signals you want will be much closer than what is generating the garbage and the signal will get through. You would have to test it. The only downside is that the W800 is not "listening" during the short time it is transmitting the data down the serial line.

Jon

The W800 and the antenna that it came with seem to be working great in my attic of my 2 story home. I have taken the batteries out of every single RF transmitter, motion sensor, any thing that the w800 can read. I get no signals as expected with the very detailed logging on.

About once every 2 - 3 hours I get one corrupt tansmission message in the w800 log (With very high details logging on)

I decided to build the old c. Once I finished assebling the turnstile antenna I placed it in my attic next the the factory default little antenna and connected the coax that used to go to the factory default little antenna to the new Dave Huston turnstile antenna.

Well when I went to the homeseer log, I was now getting a corrupt RF Transmission every 2 seconds!!! I went back into the attic and reconnected the the factory default little antenna and the homeseer log of the w800 is quiet again.

Where could I have screwed up with the the factory default little antenna?

The range with the factory default little antenna is just fine (well over the perimetr of my house... I got about 4 houses away before I decided this was far enough)

I am curious why min fails when everyone else seems to love the turnstile antenna.

[Mike]

I am curious why min fails when everyone else seems to love the turnstile antenna.

Personally, I'm curious why you'd even need the turnstile antenna if the factory one picks up from 4 houses away?

[Oman]

The same reason we want to automate things that only take 1 second per day to operate :> - and spend hours if not days doing it.

Jon

Personally, I'm curious why you'd even need the turnstile antenna if the factory one picks up from 4 houses away?

[jeanv]

Oman are you saying that I should operate the w800 with the turnstile antenna even though I get tons of bad RF transmissions compared to the factory antenna? I worry that all the RF Noise picked up by the w800 with the turnstile antenna would get in the way of the legit signals.


Right now I am back to the factory antenna and am getting 1 bad RF signal every 2 - 3 hours.

[Oman]

With that many bad transmissions I would not use the new antenna. I was just trying to say that it sounds like it is working TOO well. You might be able to pick up stuff two blocks away but usually that is a bad thing.

Jon

Oman are you saying that I should operate the w800 with the turnstile antenna even though I get tons of bad RF transmissions compared to the factory antenna? I worry that all the RF Noise picked up by the w800 with the turnstile antenna would get in the way of the legit signals.


Right now I am back to the factory antenna and am getting 1 bad RF signal every 2 - 3 hours.

[Rupp]

OK I'm confused which isn't hard to do. But if the factory antenna is working as you stated

"working great in my attic of my 2 story home"

then why in the world would you spend the time and money and hassle of building and testing another antenna?

[mfisher]

jeanv,

The W800RF2 uses an automatic gain control i(AGC) in the RF section that adjusts to various levels of received RF signal. When there are no X10 RF transmissions (low RF levels), the AGC goes to 'full' and amplifys the background RF noise. This is most likely what you are seeing. As soon as a legitimate X10 signal starts, the AGC adjusts downward to the level of the X10 signal and your transmission is received, decoded and transmitted to the PC. Is it possible that there is some 300mHz RF transmitter in your area? This could definitely be a culprit.

If the spurious signals you're not getting are not valid X10 signals, then you should be fine with either antenna.

I recently switched to the W800RF2 and am using the turnstyle antenna with results far superior to my previlus turnstyle/RF amplifier/MR26A solution so I had not even considered turning logging on. I just enabled very high detail logging and I'll let you know if I see anything like what you're seeing...

[Mike]

The same reason we want to automate things that only take 1 second per day to operate :> - and spend hours if not days doing it.

Oh yeah, almost forgot about that aspect of it.

[MeSteve]

OK I'm confused which isn't hard to do. But if the factory antenna is working as you stated then why in the world would you spend the time and money and hassle of building and testing another antenna?

Sounds like somebody has gotten too comfy with a house that is working the way he wants