For those of you following my saga (Everything fine on one phase; nothing on other phase even with a coupler.) ...
I called in the marines tonight. The town wizard came over with his oscilloscope. This is the guy that Lockheed calls when one of it's satellites goes haywire (really). Not to mention that he's an HA freak too.
We got an engineer from PCS on the phone. We opened up several of my panels and performed all sorts of sophisticated tests.
I won't bore you with the test configurations, but the conclusion is that the PIM works on one of my phases, but not on the other. In other words, if the PIM is on phase A, it can communicate perfectly with all devices on phase A. With no couplers, 1 coupler, or 2 couplers installed, that signal is so poor on phase B that communication with devices on that phase is impossible. If the PIM is on phase B, it can communicate with devices that are very local to it (like plugged right into it), but as far away as the main panel (about 200-300') the signal is so degraded and noisy that it is useless.
Why might this be the case? My expert speculates that either there is a piece of equipment on one of the phases that is somehow destroying the signal; or, perhaps the step-down transformer itself is destroying the signal. Note that the evil equipment, if any, could be in my house or any of my neighbors houses, as we all share the same phase(s). Note also that this would have to be a 110V device. Personally, I think this is very unlikely and probably it's the transformer itself.
On the oscilloscope trace, the expert notes that there is a deformation of the sine wave on the bad phase only, right about where the UPB signals are supposed to go. On the other (good) phase, you can clearly see the UPB signals, bits and all.
So what's a mother to do?
Adding another PIM on the bad phase won't work. Couplers don't work. A repeater might work if it drove a strong enough signal, but according to PCS, they don't have such a thing (at least for split phase).
Unless someone else has another idea, I must reluctantly reach the conclusion that UPB isn't sufficiently bulletproof to work reliably on all installations, and I'm one of the unlucky ones.
I have only 2 things to try:
1. Call PG&E (local power company) and complain that I'm not getting clean enough power. There's a small chance they might listen and do something about it, but since all electrical devices are working fine, I doubt they will care.
2. Call PCS and/or SA and see if they might want to send in their own experts (as opposed to consulting by phone) to study what's happening here and see if they can find a workaround. It can't be good for UPB acceptance to have it fail for a visible early adopter like me. (At least, that's my argument.)
HELP!
Jerry
I called in the marines tonight. The town wizard came over with his oscilloscope. This is the guy that Lockheed calls when one of it's satellites goes haywire (really). Not to mention that he's an HA freak too.
We got an engineer from PCS on the phone. We opened up several of my panels and performed all sorts of sophisticated tests.
I won't bore you with the test configurations, but the conclusion is that the PIM works on one of my phases, but not on the other. In other words, if the PIM is on phase A, it can communicate perfectly with all devices on phase A. With no couplers, 1 coupler, or 2 couplers installed, that signal is so poor on phase B that communication with devices on that phase is impossible. If the PIM is on phase B, it can communicate with devices that are very local to it (like plugged right into it), but as far away as the main panel (about 200-300') the signal is so degraded and noisy that it is useless.
Why might this be the case? My expert speculates that either there is a piece of equipment on one of the phases that is somehow destroying the signal; or, perhaps the step-down transformer itself is destroying the signal. Note that the evil equipment, if any, could be in my house or any of my neighbors houses, as we all share the same phase(s). Note also that this would have to be a 110V device. Personally, I think this is very unlikely and probably it's the transformer itself.
On the oscilloscope trace, the expert notes that there is a deformation of the sine wave on the bad phase only, right about where the UPB signals are supposed to go. On the other (good) phase, you can clearly see the UPB signals, bits and all.
So what's a mother to do?
Adding another PIM on the bad phase won't work. Couplers don't work. A repeater might work if it drove a strong enough signal, but according to PCS, they don't have such a thing (at least for split phase).
Unless someone else has another idea, I must reluctantly reach the conclusion that UPB isn't sufficiently bulletproof to work reliably on all installations, and I'm one of the unlucky ones.
I have only 2 things to try:
1. Call PG&E (local power company) and complain that I'm not getting clean enough power. There's a small chance they might listen and do something about it, but since all electrical devices are working fine, I doubt they will care.
2. Call PCS and/or SA and see if they might want to send in their own experts (as opposed to consulting by phone) to study what's happening here and see if they can find a workaround. It can't be good for UPB acceptance to have it fail for a visible early adopter like me. (At least, that's my argument.)
HELP!
Jerry
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