I installed a three way dimmer and slave, controlled it with an IR543 using a Pronto. It worked great for a couple days until it suddenly did some random off and ons and dimming when I manually dimmed the lights. The wall dimmer and slave still work manually as they are supposed to but the IR543 will no longer do anything to control the lights. I admit I have 16 75watt Halogen lights (1200 watts) on a 1000 watt dimmer with 2 flanges removed to get to fit in a gang switch box. According to the instructions, removing flanges reduces the dimmer capacity. I am trying to figure out if the dimmer or the IR543 went bad. Has any body ever heard of a dimmer that fails to receive remote signals but still works manually. Any ideas before I order all new stuff would be helpful. Also, does anybody make a dimmer with more than 1000 watt capacity.

1000 watts is the highest capacity dimmer I have seen and as you mentioned, they are derated (about 20% I think) if remove the flanges - they may also need to be further derated if they are in a multi-gang box with another dimmer.

I think the slave switch in a multi-way installation is just another transmitter so my guess (and that is all it is) would be a problem with the IR543. Have you tried moving it to another outlet or tried changing house/unit codes - that might be an easy first step in trouble shooting your problem.

Good Luck, Jim.

For what it's worth, I was running 600W of halogen lights on a 500W 'standard' X-10 wall switch for a little while and definitely ran into problems. It got *very* hot when it was on, and when it was hot it would refuse to respond to X-10 commands. After it cooled down for a while it would work again. The whole switch failed after a short time, however. This was a year or two ago, and I don't recall exactly how it failed, but I think it just refused to turn on one day.

HTH,
Brett

People things are rated for a reason. do not exceed it's max. The 2 of you have done just that, and are running into problems. Try driving your car around for a week but befor you do that drain the engine oil out first. Lutron makes dimmers up to 2400 watts, way more than any 15 or 20 amp circut will handel. To have 16 lights on one switch do you have a hallway like 100 feet long or do you have one light switch in the house to turn on/off all lights at one time. I have 32 1200 watt dimmers in a utility closet in my house and LCD low voltage touch screens in every room to control lighting seens. I can link all panels in a party mode so one panel can talk to all others at one time. Or I can tell any one room what to do from any other room. Only I can do that because that part is password protected, and infact I can even lock out panels from people using them if need be. I have a 600 amp 3 phase panel on the outside of my house to run lighting and computers and hair dryers, coffee makes, ect. and a sub 200 amp panel to run my spa, pool and elevator in my house. You want to know what is really cool. I can control my Jandy Pool system from my stereo remote control and the Jandy does not support IR or RF. I can contol the voltage going into my elevator too so when the kids are in it and they are being brats I can lock them in-between floors. I can lock out any electrical out let in the house for what ever reason I want from any LCD touch panel or from my stereo remote. All of this and I never have to worry about a lighting circut being over loaded. This is not ment for me to brag on cool I think my home automation system is. But to let people know that when something is built it was designed with a purpose in mind and with a set of limitations.

Good luck