A dusty little corner of the Internet: electronics, computer hardware and software, general aviation, 1980's Mopars, and related sundry.
Electronics
Home Automation
| Home Automation | Devices | Software |
Information on some of the older home automation projects. Most of this is very old and irrelevant at this point, as the world has moved on from X10 to Z-Wave and Zigbee.
X10
Posted on August 05, 2003.
Since purchasing a home, I have been trying to make our living space more comfortable and convenient through home automation. To implement this, I started with the X10 system. The X10 technology has been around for a very long time. It uses your house wiring to transmit low data rate signals to various modules plugged or wired into it. Though slow and prone to noise, the system does work and is very easy to install and configure. X10 also offers a wirless solution for control over the system. A special tranceiver module receives the signal and transmits it to the modules through your wiring. You then have many transmitters to choose from, such as keypads, keychain remotes, multifunction remote controls, motion sensors, etc.
X10 (the company) is only one vendor from which you can buy X10 (the technology) devices, though they are generally the cheapest. There are other vendors, such as SmartHome, Leviton, PCS, and Home Pro that also offer X10 products, often of better quality and flexibility than those from X10 (the company). Still, the quickest, most cost-effective way to get started is using one of X10's (the company) starter kits.
Beyond X10
Posted on August 05, 2003.
While X10 devices are completely self-sufficient (you can buy timer, etc to improve automation), in my mind the next level of home automation is to put it under intelligent computer control. X10 (the company) offers several "ActiveHome" kits that are great to get started in this area. The software that comes with ActiveHome leaves a few things to be desired, however (more on this later). With a computer at the center, you can configure it to do intelligent things based on the time of day, whether it's light or raining outside, activity within the home, etc. The possibilities are endless.
There are devices that you can connect only to a computer to improve flexibility and performance. You can also extend the automation systems further with multi-I/O units that can interface with the world outside of X10, giving you control of doors, sprinklers, etc and allowing other types of sensor inputs (rain gauges, temperature, etc).
