On December 3, 2003 10:11 am, Mailing List wrote:

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

Taking some time to get caught up. I have been using this stuff, first from Radio Shack, now X10 for almost 20 years. Starting with an 8 bit computer as controller, now this machine. It isn't the most reliable but does ok in the home. Some of my lamp/appliance controllers are at least 15 years old, others have only lasted a short while. There is a Linux program to control this stuff called Heyu. Like 'heyu - turn off the light'. I have it controlling about 10 lights around the house via cron. It does just about everything that the Activehome software does but not yet via a GUI frontend. Rad. Shack still sell the modules but I have found a nearby electrical distributor with a pretty decent stock for less $$. There are always bargain packages available at the U.S. site if you want to order that way. The only caution is, the X10 signals don't get across the 2 phases in the house reliably. Heyu supports more than one controller so you can have one on each phase or you can with a bit of magic, help the signals with a bridge. Now bridge isn't the right word but its the best I can come up with right now. Cheers Merv -- Merv Curley Scarborough, Ont Libranet Linux 2.8 KDE 3.1.4 KMail 1.5.4 -- 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