Loadingā¦
3
Client complaint about false alarms made me rewire everything
I had a house last month in Arlington where the homeowner said her motion sensors were going off at 3 AM every night for a week. I spent two hours troubleshooting, thinking it was a bad sensor or maybe a pet issue. Turns out I had run the sensor wires too close to a fluorescent light ballast in the basement ceiling. The guy showed me a YouTube video about EMI interference and I felt like an idiot. Swapped out the cable route with shielded wire and no more problems. Any of you guys run into interference issues from something dumb like LED drivers or fans?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
rubyj112mo ago
Fluorescent ballasts are pure evil for low voltage work... EMI bleeds into everything nearby. Had an AC unit fan motor once that made a cat6 run go completely haywire until I realized the cable was laying on top of the return duct.
3
barbaragarcia2mo ago
Laying on top of the return duct"? That's insane. I can't believe a simple duct could cause that much interference. You must have been pulling your hair out trying to figure that one out. I've heard of ballasts being noisy but that's on a whole other level.
2