Howard Winter wrote: > Neil, > > On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:05:31 -0400, Neil Cherry wrote: > > I'd said: > >>>> Overall I've found the X10 products to be very "bitty", with no >>>> real clever thinking in the design. For example, pretty much all >>>> the >> You are not impressed by the analog technology used in the late >> 1970's? Boy are you spoiled! ;-) For the time the design is very >> cool, of course all this can be pretty easily handled with a PIC >> (but now we could also throw in ACKs). > I'm not unimpressed by the X10 idea and its technical details, but > by the stagnation in actual products. The stagnation part made me laugh as is it so true! X10 is just milking an old cow. They have come out with the CM15A but they then took what is a great setup and made the software brain dead. > Most of the standalone > controllers look like they were designed in the USA in the 1960's > (controllers in a brown plastic box with cream-coloured pushbuttons, The standalone controllers are a bit useful but are annoying but their simplicity is what keeps the inexpensive. > Any ideas how to debug this? > It would be handy to be able to "see" the data on the mains, but I > don't have a way to isolate a 'scope. There are a few ways to debug this: the first is to move the X10 devices side by side, away from TV's, stereos an PCs. Then test the units. Not a great way to test as it really only tells you it works or doesn't (won't tell you if the unit is actually sending bits). For that you need the EMS1 (don't know if that will work outside the US's 120/60) or use my mTW523. The mTW523 is pretty good at looking at the bits as they are sent. I haven't written code to make it send out bits but that shouldn't be too difficult. > And there seems to be a lack of common sense in some of the designs > - there's a thing called a "micro module" which fits behind a > lightswitch: > http://www.laser.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=164&category_id=dbf4aa47dce7821619f9811277a1d3a8& We get around all this limitation by using things like Mr. House (MH). That way you can flick a switch, let it send it's X10 and MH will interpret what you're trying to do. There are software tools to do this but you need to have a PC running at all times. >> Take a look at this if your curious: >> http://www.linuxha.com/athome/common/mTW523/index.html >> I won't claim it's perfect, I seem to recall that I ended up with >> two pages with the important information split between then. I >> really should clean that up. > Looks like Good Stuff to me! I would have liked more detail as to > what your modification does, and where the 120/230V and 60/50Hz > changes would be needed... but then I'm greedy! :-) There is an X10 TW7223 that should work with 220Vac/50Hz but don't bet the farm on that as I can't seem to find the specs on the unit. I've seen reports of 220-230/50 but the Internet is full of inaccuracies. I'd guess that the schematic should be quite similar the the TW523 (they never update anything) and that it's main difference is the TC2 transformer. It's probably rated for 220/50 instead of 120/60. Change a few variables in my program and it should work properly for 50Hz. It's written for a P16F877 The idea came to me one day when I wanted to see every bit of the X10 (literally). So I opened up a spare TW523, cleanly removed the main chip. I then took bits of wire, bent them into a loops and soldered them into Pin 4 (X10 in) and Pin 24 (X10 out). The purpose of the chip was to send valid X10 to the device on the other side of the optos. I just made it send raw signals. The rest is just coding (software). You can still receive X10 and send it but now you can receive invalid X10 and even go as far as making up your own signaling The original TW523 schematic is in the X10 Tech note: http://www.linuxha.com/athome/common/x10.technicalnote.pdf I'm also trying to clean up the various pages. They're a real mess. But I do have enough that it can be made to compile the code properly. I have it working under C2C (under Linux) but I think I moved to over to CCS (under Linux). We may also want to move this off [OT} and move it to [EE] or at least change the title to reflect X10. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist