At a clients house, I had two RFX150 antennas wired up to the phoenix connector RF input on the back of the MRF to cover full range of his house. Everything was fine the day I installed it, but I went back two weeks later to change a few things to his system, and I noticed the antenna was picking up interference. I tried moving the upstairs antenna around, but to no avail. I thought maybe one of the antennas was picking up interference from something so I disconnected one, still had problems. Hooked it back up and disconnected the other one. Still problems. So finally I just removed one antenna and hooked up the other one to the 3.5mm RF in jack, and all problems went away. I've used the phoenix connector before with no problems. Could this have been a bad MRF, or did something happen when I had two antennas wired up? This was the first time I've had to wire in two antennas, so I can't relate it to any past installs.

--Jim

How far away are the antennas. The seem to work best if they are 50 feet away or greater.

Bob

They were probably about that. Possibly 40 feet. But I was still having problems with only one antenna connected to the phoenix connector.

We've seen problems like you describe in a few other jobs. Some of them were fixed by simply using all of the pairs in the CAT 5 wire to increase shielding:

The method is fairly simple:

Cat 5 has four twisted pairs. From each pair, take one of the conductors and crimp all four together to GND.

From each of two of the pairs, take the other conductors and crimp the two together to DATA.

From the remaining two pairs take the last two remaining conductors and crimp them to 5V.

This method decreases interference and makes some jobs work well. If you still have problems, we have some beta test product that should fix the site.

What remote controls are you using on the jobsite?

Best Regards,

-Eric

Thanks Eric. Yea, I do now recall reading on here about having problems using CAT5 to extend the antennas. I'll have to remember to carry a roll of 18/2 shielded on the van for future installs.

If I'm at the clients house again, I'll try that method with the cat5. And we're using two MX900s in his house. One for the main watching area, and one for Zone2 operation. We're actually getting very good coverage outside using just the one antenna in the middle of the house (usually we don't get good reception towards the back of a yard using an antenna in the middle of the house and have to place one against an exterior wall.)

Are you guys gonna make the RFX250 compatible with the 800/850 in the future?

Hi 8ate8,

Actually CAT5 is fine with the above method. If you still have problems, since you are using MX-900s, your system could be upgraded to RFX-250s with the MRF-300. That will also lessen the amount of interference enormously.

We will eventually make MX-850s compatible with the RFX-250 (not the other way around). Sometime late this year, you'll start receiving MX-850s from us with narrow band transmitters.

Best Regards,

-Eric

Shucks. We have some installs from several months ago that had major RF interference. Was hoping that once the new antenna came out we could swap out the RFX150 with the RFX250 and have all our problems disappear :)

Glad to hear that new 850s will support the antenna, though.

Upgrade the clients to MX-900s and you can fix them now. Email me about the sites, maybe I can make them beta test sites...

Best Regards,

-Eric

Well, we can fix it once we get some RFX250s in stock :D I'll shoot you an email later.

-- Jim