[sclug] X-10

[Tom Dawes-Gamble]

Hi,

I have quite a lot of X-10 stuff (unfortunately).

The X-10 units in this country have a number of (IMHO) design faults.

First the lamp units that replace the normal light switch are only
available in single switch so if you have say Ceiling lights and Wall
lights in a single switch you can't replace the switch.

The Lamp controllers come on Fully Bright.

If you manually adjust the dim/bright (i.e. at the unit) when you touch
the switch it comes on next time you touch it goes off. If you hold the
switch down it will fade to dim and then fade back to bright and then to
dim and so on. so if you fade to dim and go too far you have to go all
the way to almost off and then fade back up.  Of course if you go too
far when going bright you have to go full bright and then dim.

There is no way with any software to know what level a light is.

The appliance modules are gastly you have to use these if you want to
drive something more than a light Bulb.  The have a huge soleniod that
make a loud bang each time you change state.

If I haven't put you off and you still want to have a go I use HEYU  see
http://www.heyu.org for that software.

Tom.




On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 14:34 +0100, AdamT wrote:
> Just seeing the electric/gas thread has reminded me of something I
> vowed to do a couple of years back - wire up a small Linux box as a
> household X-10 controller.
> 
> Has anyone else on the list done this kind of thing?  And if so - can
> you recommend any particular hardware/software vendors who play nicely
> with Linux?
> 
> Ideally - I'd like to run it off of a very tiny P1/133 'databrick',
> with a whopping 64Mb of EDO RAM, and an incomprehensibly large hard
> disk, offering just over 4Gb of storage.
> 
> Any comments/advice greatly appreciated,
> 
> Thanks,
> 
-- 
There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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