[HH] Home remote control - not exactly hardware hacking.

[Jack Coats]

X10 communicates over the electrical wires.  So if you have 220V to
the normal 110V USA house,
it may only communicate over half the outlets (one side of the 220V).
You can get over that if you
install a 'bridge', but that is something else to put in.

As designed X10 is one way communication.  It also is inherently
un-reliable and the ones I have
used 'fail on' after a power outage.  Some X10 controllers re-publish
the settings on occasion
(once a minute more or less) but not all.  So if you have a power
failure, you may come back
to find all the X10's on.  Because of the un-reliable power where I
live (sticks of TN) they are not
a good choice.

There is a device that allows Linux or Windows to talk X10, but I
don't think it will receive.

X10 was initially designed to be one way communication, so it doesn't
do 2 way well.  Basically to
do lights on/off/dim kinds of things.  Appliance modules were on/off,
dimmers were for incandescent
lights mainly (not fluorescent) and the dimmers often provided a
chopped wave so it was
electrically noisy.

X10.com will sell you just about anything X10 (and more).  Most of the
stuff works as described,
but don't over-read what you would like it to do... it probably won't.
 If you search hard, I think
there is a fair explanation of X10 (at least there was a few years
ago, if I remember right).

The x10grench... Jack

(There are some 10mbit ethernet over power devices and nic's out
there.  They may still need
a bridge to another phase of power, but they tend to work fairly well.
 They might be worth
investigating depending on what you want to do.)

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 8:22 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote:
> Years ago I looked into X10 et. al. and decided it was not worth it at the
> time. What I am looking for is a couple of wireless outlets so I can program
> a couple of lamps that are currently running on manual timers.
> I've looked at Insteon, and a couple of places. What I want to do is to
> control a lamp (and later a thermostat) from Linux or Android via WiFi. (X10
> used to use wireless via home electrical wiring).
>
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman<gaf at blu.org>
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
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