[Techtalk] X10 Users?
Andrea Landaker
qirien at icecavern.net
Fri Jan 16 10:48:48 EST 2004
> Does anybody here use X10 gear for home automation?
>
> If so, what programs do you use to get it going under Linux?
Yeah, we were using it for all our Christmas lights, and I'm thinking of
getting some more components to automate outdoor lights and things like
that. :-)
If you have the firecracker module (the one that plugs into your serial port),
Bottlerocket (http://mlug.missouri.edu/~tymm/) is a command-line utility that
will work just fine (especially with cron or something like that).
Rocketlauncher (http://linuxprofessionalsolutions.com/RocketLauncher) is a
Tcl/tk interface that looks like the little remote pad that you can buy.
If you have the CM11A or CM12A, Heyu (http://heyu.tanj.com/heyu/) is probably
what you want to use (I haven't tried it though). If you have this device,
you can also use x10 input to control your computer using Xtend
(http://www.jabberwocky.com/software/xtend/) - it's kind of the reverse of
what you usually do with x10, but also useful.
I haven't tried MisterHouse (http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/) yet, but it
looks like it does lots of this kind of stuff, though it may be overkill if
you just want to turn on and off some lights. :-)
BlueLava (http://www.sgtwilko.f9.co.uk/bluelava/) lets you control your x10
devices from the web.
There's tons of other progams - just search freshmeat or sourceforge for x10
if none of these do what you want. :-)
Oh yes, and maybe you already know this, but you don't have to buy X10 gear
from x10.com - x10 is just the protocol that the devices use, lots of other
places sell these kinds of devices, too, sometimes more cheaply. It's often
worth looking around, especially if you're buying a bunch at a time.
Hope this helps!
--
Andrea Landaker
http://www.icecavern.net/~qirien/
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