I've played around with X10 and Misterhouse, but I have yet to get serious with it all. I own 2 lamp and 2 appliance modules (2 bought via mail order from X10, the other two I scored free from a former employer (they had planned to use X-10 in the computer room to remote reset hardware, but found X10 wasn't reliable enough, so the modules were unneeded/unwanted, and I got them)). As well I have a few X10 extra goodies like a serial to power line adapter (lets you send X10 turn on/off commands from almost anything that can do RS-232). As Michael Galea notes X10 is not good for anything that is critical, I have an X10 controlled electric fireplace insert and maybe once a month I get up in the morning to find the insert turned on (something that I attribute to RF/power line spikes/interference)). In other words I don't consider X10 to be reliable enough for much more than controlling some lights and/or some light duty appliances (ie: stuff that would be a bother, but not a disaster if it were suddenly turned on (or off) without warning at say 3:06 AM). As for the Misterhouse software, that looks VERY cool, a bunch of PERL scripts to run you house (which also means the scripts will run on also sorts of platforms, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac, and those Microsoft "operating systems"). Touches that appeal to me are the in-house robot DJ (that can do things like let you know about new e-mail (with speech synthesis software) between songs, tell you the time, etc...). "Michael Galea" <MichaelGalea-4VtgCsEi+FIybS5Ee8rs3A at public.gmane.org> on Wednesday, December 03, 2003 5:52 PM wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Mailing List [mailto:tlug-KfBRzk3UKwol8X4E99VVQg at public.gmane.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 10:11 AM To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org Subject: [TLUG]: MisterHouse / x10 /home automation

Has anyone used x10 or home automation in their house? Where is a good place to shop for x10 stuff? Any recommendations?

Robert -- I use it to turn a fan on in my attack, and it has worked reliably for three seasons now. I used an x10 motion sensor to turn on a lamp in my hall at night so my kids wouldn't go bouncing into things on the way to the loo.. Somewhere in my neighborhood, someone else started to experiment with x10 and turned my tv set on a few times (select an original house/device code and you can get around that..) All that having been said, the technology has no capability for error detection and retransmission and I never considered it reliable, or used it for anything I really needed to depend upon. The fact that you can't pull data with it, just push doesn't help either.. -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml

-- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml