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I HATE FLAKY ELECTRONICS!
Grrr. My Mother has a remote control system that uses the house wiring to send signals to control modules to turn lights and other electric stuff on or off. She uses it to have lights come on or off to make the house look lived in, and to have lights come on when she wants to see. As her vision has decreased in recent years, this system has become more important, so that lights can be turned off after she has left the area to go to bed.
In the last month or two, controls have worked erratically. Some days, no control will correctly turn on or off a particular module. I can replace the module, same problem. I can see that the signal is being sent, since other modules with the same ID turn on or off. Next day, it works. Several times in the last month, a particular light that has a module, but no programed actions, has been turned on. (and then none of the controllers will turn it off.) Even a brand new controller purchased last week will do the same thing - sometime it can turn the units on or off, sometime the unit seems to ignore the command. But the behavior continues after I've replaced all parts of the system with newer components.
I know that even solid state electronics eventually wear out, but this is really annoying. Reminds me of my first software test job, where we had a bug that would randomly overwrite a memory location that happened to be the target of a jump instruction. Something happens that I haven't figured out yet, and the system doesn't work for a while. (and I also haven't figured out what resets it, either.)
This is a control system made by X10 corp (don't go to their website, it's got really annoying graphics) but it was also sold under several other brand-names, including Sears and RadioShack.
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