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From: bender@oobleck.Eng.Sun.COM (Michael Bender)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: X-10 home control saga continues
Message-ID: <7458@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Feb 91 10:45:33 GMT
Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 89

Well, I got a little less than 1/2 of my X-10 home control system
installed and working (not really that difficult to get it working,
but plugging those little lamp dimmer modules into the wall socket
is a real bear!! :->).

I've got most of the wall-switch-controlled fixtures in my house
converted to the X-10 wall switches, and a few table/clip-on lamps
connected to the plug-in dimmer modules.

I did kind of a neat hack for the outside porch light/garage work
light, described in my previous X-10 posting.  I got a chance to
try it out today when I got home from work, and it was pretty neat.
I pulled up in front of my house, hit the old garage-door-opener
button on my bike, and the porch light and garage work light
came on, and I could finally find my keys to open the front door
without fumbling through the whole key ring!  The 555 timer worked
like a charm, giving me about 3-1/2 minutes of lights on time,
enought to get in the front door, open the garage and get my
bike in.  As I thought about the system I have set up at home on
the way to wrok this morning, I lamented the fact that the
universal controller isn't more programmable, so when I get the
X-10 chip specs it looks like I'm going to build a more intelligent
interface for the system.

I took apart one of the mini-controllers that R.S. sells for $12
to see if I could get it to send codes for unit numbers 9-16.  It
really annoyed me that this controller, while a pretty good deal
at $12, only supported the first eight unit numbers (1-8), with no
provision to access unit numbers 9-16, so after a little digging,
I noticed that the unit number range switch (1-4 or 5-8) was really
just feeding a binary number into the X-10 chip in the controller,
so I took the switch off, and got access to unit numbers 13-16.
After a little more poking around, I got the controller to send
commands for units 9-12, so now I can control all 16 units under
the same house code with my controller by simply adding a switch;
I think I'm going to use one of the neat mini 4-position rotary
switches that I picked up surplus a few months ago.

I also noticed that the house code selector switch (1 of 16 house
codes) was just a mechanical 4-bit switch, so I'm hopefull that
even if it takes a while to get the X-10 chip specs, I can easily
modify one of the mini controllers to send commands for all 16
channels and all 16 house codes with the simple addition of some
opto-isolators to operate the buttons-that-were via something
like an 8051; that would give me serial control from my computer.

For the computer, I need something that could stay on all the time, yet
doesn't require a lot of power, so the Sun was out, and a PC is still too
power-hungry.  I settled on using an old Tandy Model-100 laptop that my dad
was getting rid of.  I'm thinking of mounting to the wall in our kitchen,
and that way it can also be near the phone and used as a message center,
phone dialer, and perhaps I can use the built-in 300 baud modem to answer my
phone after so many rings and allow remote access to my home control and
security system.

I've got two wireless X-10 receivers set up in the bathroom off of the
garage (now really just a storage room), but was getting pretty poor range
from the hand-held remotes until I added about 3 feet of antenna wire to
each remote receiver.  Now I can control my system from the back yard, or
from out front without any problems.  Really, the remote receiver/hand-held
transmitter is the neatest part of the system.

So much for X-10.  I'd welcome any comments from others using X-10;
how you like it, what problems you've had with it, what kind of
interfaces you've built (or contemplated building) for it.

I think it's basically a sound system, the major weakness in the whole
scheme is the way that the manufacturers seemed to have low-balled the
controllers; a little more programmability would do wonders to make the
system easier to live with.

Here's an idea that I had while riding to work:

	I've got, let's say, 4 lamps in my living room that I
	control, each on a seperate channel.  It would be great
	if I could assign them to a group, so that for example
	if the lamps are uni #'s 1,2,3 and 4, unit #5 (or whatever)
	would affect all 4 lamps equally, yet I could still retain
	independent control of each of the lamps if I wanted it.

	The system is capable of doing this, the controller just
	needs to interface to a computer rather than just sending
	the codes out on the line verbatim.

mike
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