[NBLUG/talk] Setting up X-10 home automation

[Walter Hansen]

I'd love to set that up on ours, the dsl off/on? How much (ballpark) did
it run to do that? Also for better reliablity out of many of the DSL
modems, wrap them up in aluminum foil like a big potato. Multiple layers
might help also (one worked for us, but if I re-did it I'd put on
several). I cut little holes for the lights and left most of the back pane
open. This was at the suggestion of upper level sonic techs and *it
worked*. We used to go down daily. Now it's more of a once every while
sort of thing. I think the units are very susceptable to any type of
electronic noise. Cordless phones are supposed to be the worst source of
problems for them.

> On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 08:24:23AM -0700, Lincoln Peters wrote:
>> I'd like to use my Linux box to control a few appliances in my house,
>> such as
>> a lamp that I use as an alarm clock (my college schedule is too complex
>> for
>> an ordinary appliance timer to handle).  Of course, being a home
>> automation
>> technology that runs on Linux, I'm sure that once I've set it up, I'll
>> find
>> more wild and crazy applications for it.
>>
>> However, the biggest obstacle I've encountered thus far is that I can't
>> find
>> any place that sells all of the necessary hardware.  Radio Shack carries
>> the
>> control modules but not the parts that allow the computer to control
>> them,
>> and nowhere else that I've looked seems to carry any of them.
>>
>> Thus, I have two questions for anyone who uses X-10 (and I know
>> *someone* here
>> uses it):
>
> Sorry for the late response. I just finished setting up my old X-10 system
> I
> had set up a few years ago for my DSL modem. I run a number of services on
> my
> home DSL line but over the past few weeks for some strange reason my
> connection
> would drop off and only recover if I power cycled my DSL modem.  I have
> one of
> those old X-10 "Firecracker" sets that include a computer serial adapter,
> a
> remote control, and the basic transceiver, along with lamp and grounded
> modules. There is a linux program called "bottlerocket" that you can use
> to
> interface with this serial device, and it has a pass-through so that you
> can
> plug in other devices after it.
>
> Basically I have a cron job run this script every two minutes:
>
>     #!/usr/bin/perl
>
>     $gateway = '64.142.83.1';
>     $result = system("ping -c 5 $gateway > /dev/null");
>     unless($result == 0){
>       print "disconnected\n";
>       system('br --port /dev/ttyS0 A4 OFF');
>       sleep 1;
>       system('br --port /dev/ttyS0 A4 OFF');
>       sleep 30;
>       system('br --port /dev/ttyS0 A4 ON');
>       sleep 1;
>       system('br --port /dev/ttyS0 A4 ON');
>       print "reconnected\n";
>     }
>
> It pings my gateway and in the case of a failure if will attempt to turn
> off my DSL modem two times, wait 30 seconds, then turn it back on. It
> prints "reconnected" so that since cron will email any output to you, I
> get a nice backlog so I can track how often this happens.
>
>>
>> 1. Where do you buy X-10 hardware?  Is there any place that sells it
>> locally?
>> (I'd like to have it installed and configured by Wednesday, if
>> possible.)
>
> Radio Shack actually stocks a pretty decent array of X-10 devices. HSC
> used to afew years ago but they've since stopped carrying anything. Fry's
> also has a lot of X-10 hardware if you need anything fancy (like some of
> the wall switches and such).
>
>>
>> 2. Any caveats I should know about regarding X-10 controllers?  I'm
>> already
>> aware that it's a good idea to send each command twice in case it got
>> corrupted the first time, and some devices have a tendency to create
>> electrical "noise" that interferes with the signals.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Lincoln Peters
>> <sampln at sbcglobal.net>
>>
>> hangover, n.:
>> 	The wrath of grapes.
>>
>
> The main thing I'd advise other than sending the signal twice, is to
> possibly pick some other house code than 'A' just in case one of your
> neighbors has the same set of devices. Also be sure to test everything out
> with the remote control (if you have one) and your br program a few times.
> One nice feature of having all of this on a linux system is that it's
> really simple to set up cron jobs to turn on lamps in your house in the
> evening if you are away on a vacation, and then turn them off around bed
> time.
>
> --
> Kyle Rankin
> NBLUG President
> The North Bay Linux Users Group
> http://nblug.org
> IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug
> kyle at nblug.org
>
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