Re: All Lights On/All Units Off and Modifying an MT10

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

>
>Anyone know the reason why X10 controllers tend to have All Lights On
>buttons but no All Lights Off? All Units Off isn't nearly as useful.
How
>likely am I to want to turn off the entire house?
>
>Since All Lights Off is supported in the protocol I was wondering about
the
>possibility of modifying a Mini-Timer to send All Lights Off rather
than
>All

Trouble with that is, I believe, that many of the X10 modules don't support
the "All lights off" command either, - this includes LM12's and
the wall
switches. (not sure about DIN modules though..), so it's not actually a
great deal of use...


>Units Off. I am assuming it would be as "simple" as
reprogramming a few
>bytes in the IC but having not taken a Mini Timer apart am not sure
what it
>is using to run the X10 commands.
>
>Anyone who has disassembled an MT10 have any discoveries they want to
>share?
>


Not yet, but strangely enough, this is something I am actively planning to
do in the very near future... Following on from the discussion about how
limited minitimers are as controllers, I came to the conclusion that they
are only so limited because of the small number of X10 unit control buttons
on them (I can't be bothered fannying around with that stupid 1-4 or 5-8
slide switch), so effectively, there are only 4 possible X10 addresses
controllable from it. As I happen to have a couple of spare minitimers,
I've
decided I'm going to cannibalise 2 of them, and mount them in a custom
enclosure which will be built onto the side of my bedside cabinet. This
will
include 8 X10 on-off buttons, in 2 groups of 4, - each group being
individually selectable for housecode, so for the first time ever I'll be
able to have 2 different housecodes available from my bedside - much more
useful for macros etc.. It will also include the clock display from one of
the timers, along with the associated clock setting buttons, a small
speaker, which will be a Homeseer announcement speaker, an RJ45 outlet for
using my laptop in bed, (no wireless here yet), and a headphone socket
which
will be wired back to the headphone socket in the bedroom TV, and I'll do
away with the cordless headphones I've previously used..

That's the plan anyway, when I'll ever get time to do this is another
matter!....

Paul G.


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