Powerline oddity

Jul 03, 2020 Last reply: 6 years ago 6 Replies
J

Last night, the PLA which feeds our TV hub "went funny". Just showing power light. It's one of a pair.



After a brief mess around, I discovered the TV can use the house WiFi (as can the TiVo) so no panic.



Investigating today, I've found that the source PLA (in my office) is merrily showing it's 3 lights, but the "receiver" (the one in the lounge) only shows one.



However, swapping them, doesn't swap the problem. The one in the office still shows 3 lights, and the one in the lounge (or indeed anywhere else I try it) only shows one.



Unless my wiring has suddenly failed, it's an odd one.



(Also noticed a wallwart appears to have failed. I would suspect lightning, only it was in a surge protected circuit).


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A

RF interference on your mains wiring possibly caused by another failing wallwart?

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G

Powerline is quite susceptible to issues like that. I'd remove things from the ring main(s) until I find the culprit. The trouble is that it might be a failed wall wart next door.

Actually, it might not be right next door. It depends how the phases are shared.

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S

I have a friend who thinks anyone who uses these devices is a c*nt because they interfere with short wave radio reception.

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B

Sometimes god is on the side of preventing RFI it seems grin. Brian

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P

SMPS devices can inject noise-on-mains.

This tends to upset some of the other devices which are noise sensitive. If you had an ADSL2+ broadband modem on the same power strip, the Sync light would not come on.

I had an Antec ATX supply do that, inject noise-on-mains.

Paul

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J

Update:

After a careful reading of manuals, and much more careful reading of LEDs, when I realised that the middle LED wasn't working, but cheap plastic was letting light from the "network activity" LED bleed through, I discovered the two PLAs simply would not see each other - even on a twin plug I rigged up just for them.

Eventually (and I had to fire up a Windows PC) I manually (re) set the network names of both to match, and they found each other, and are happily working again.

Odd one.

No amount of pressing the reset/rekey button could get them to sync. They needed a mutual name change.

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