Re: [Re: [misterhouse-users] Fun with iButtons (& a rain gauge code bug)]

[Bill R. <bi...@in...>]

On 5 Jul 00 20:48:21 MDT, Erik Lipps <el...@us...> wrote:

>Let me know how this works out, I am very interested.  Also, is there any way
>to hard wire X10?  Maybe string them onto a 1-wire bus the same way as your
>thinking with the motion sensors?  I live in an apartment and I would rather
>come up with a hard wired solution than to depend upon X10 or any other
>powerline solution for my lighting control.
>
I'll post when I get something going.  I thought my order would be
here by now, but it was apparently delayed because I needed to fill
out their on-line form agreeing that I would not export the
cryptography buttons that I ordered.  :-P

As far as hard-wiring goes, it sort of depends on what functions you
want, I guess.  If you don't need dimming, you could build some little
boxes to go between outlets and lamps (similar to the X-10 modules)
with a solid-state 110VAC relay (available at Radio Shack, and many
other places) controlled by the output pin of a 1-wire PIO chip
(available from Newark, I know - if you know any other sources, I'd
like to hear about them).  You could probably also rig up some kind of
current sensor and feed the output to the input pin on the PIO chip,
and then your software could poll the sensor to find out if the light
is really drawing power, or if the bulb is burned out or turned off at
the lamp.  If you needed to control a heavier load, or inductive
loads, I think I've seen solid-state relays that will handle those as
well.  If you want to be able to dim the lights, it would be quite a
bit uglier; some kind of pulse-width modulation circuit, with
zero-crossing detection to reduce noise, etc.  I suppose it would be
possible to hack a connection to an X-10 module that would allow it to
receive serial data from a 1-wire chip instead of the power line, but
you'd probably need to opto-isolate it to avoid nasty AC voltage on
your 1-wire network, and you'd have to bit-bang the X-10 protocol on
one of the PIO chip's outputs.  


Bill Richman