RE: Power triggering

["Kenneth Watt" <kennwatt@xxxxxxx>]

Tony,

You're getting there ;-)

Rewiring is often not needed, well not in the strictest sense anyway
IME, to go from point to point rewiring everything is a total rewire job
and this is not an easy option. You can take, for example, the main
ceiling light in my bedroom, it is on a standard double gang wall switch
and I want it X10'd there is also the (now redundant) second switch. But
we'll keep it simple and treat this as a normal bog standard single gang
switch that switched the main ceiling light on or off.

I can easily get into the loft space and connect an LD11 directly to the
light above the light fitting which means I can also access the wiring
to the wall switch as well. I could also wire the fitting and switch
back to the consumer unit in the loft easily and all out of sight, in
most modern homes I've seen this is not a huge problem, if you cannot
get access to the area above the ceiling fitting then you're screwed
without doing a lot of work. So I can use the existing wiring from the
wall switch, replace with a momentary job and connect to the LD11 and,
presto, instant X10 and local control of the ceiling light.

In my previous house I had the same problem in that rewiring was not an
option, so I found ways around the problem rather than give up. In many
cases it was not an ideal solution, but hey, nothing's every totally
ideal.

To go further I have all the table lamps in the lounge wired to one
LD11, it's in its own little housing and plugged into a standard mains
socket, instant X10 control. This of course is not the ideal way to do
it but it works well for me. It took me a while to get this right for
me, but now the lights come on automatically a short while before sunset
and it works great.

For your dusk/dawn, yes you can use a Sundowner or similar, but since I
use Homevision I have no need for it, the controller determines
dawn/dusk or light/dark to great effect and there is no need for an
additional module, I believe that Homeseer has the same capability in
this regard. What you do is really rather simple, simply tell the
software that you get up at **.**am on a workday and it wakes the house
up at that time every weekday morning. You can tell it to wake the house
up at the same time on a non-workday or you could invent some clever
script to tell it to start later. As Doogie suggested I use a
combination of elements at the weekend to determine what state the house
should be in, one of them being that the bedroom blinds do not open
until movement is detected downstairs and that it is light outside,
again this is determined by HV, not any local controls.

As to the local controller in the bedroom I do have a mini-timer there,
but really it's not essential. When I go to bed I press my "going to
bed" button and this starts a cascade of events in HV. A timer is
started in HV then lights come on where they are needed and shut down
where they are not, after a set amount of time lights go out room by
room until only a bedside lamp is left on. The timer is set to allow me
and SWMBO enough time to get to bed happily with a little margin then
power is removed from TV's, amps, lights and anything else I don't need
during the night. I do have a Marantz Pronto thing in the bedroom, but
then I have a Sony DAV300, VCR and TV in there too as well as control of
Homevision, TiVo and ITV Digital so it seemed more appropriate than five
odd remote controls scattered about. At that stage it was a simple
matter of hooking up IR control to HV and I then had full control of the
house from my bed. You could do this wire free by using a set of
Powermids or similar.

Personally, I would not put any AV kit on anything but an appliance
module anything else could introduce noise, so for me that's not an
option I'd bother with. Add to that using an appliance module is so
simple, just set the housecode and plug it in, pretty easy solution ;-)

For what you want to do I would again say, look at Homeseer and find out
how to tell it that you are going to bed, then get the amps to power on
in the morning when it suits you. Many of your answers lay in the system
that you intend using to control it all and off a few modules and an RF
remote is not your answer here as what you want to do is more complex
than that solution will allow IMO. What you can do with a simple RF or
IR remote with a controller, be it HV or otherwise, is a whole other
ballgame though ;-)

The reason I would recommend HV to anyone is the degree of control and
stability it has, so far I have not seen it matched, I have been running
HV for two years now and it hasn't failed once, bar me making it fail or
making an a** of the programming :-(. PC's have a tendency to topple
over and allow little in the way of recovery should the power fail or
whatever. It's also damned easy to program once you get into it.

HTH

K.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: BUTLER, Tony, FM [mailto:tony.butler@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 13 February 2002 11:42
> To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Power triggering
>
> > If you don't want lights to come on full blast then use LD11's, a
far
>
> Great!  Except I'm not in a position to rewire the house - again - and
> having all the upstairs lights come on at once is probably not ideal
> when SWMBO just wants the bedroom light on :(
>
> > As for your morning scenario that doesn't happen at all, the
point
of
> > When I get up, or sometimes don't bother, I have a macro that
> > fires and
> > returns the house to normal operation, but this is fully
automated!
It
> > runs at sunrise, or if sunrise has not been reached by a specific
time
>
> So I either need one of those dusk/dawn jobbies to detect sunrise/set
or I
> just decide that everything is 'On' at 7am or something?
> By everything I mean that the Tv socket would be powered etc (but
still
> standby mode)
> so SWMBO can turn them on/off as required....
>
> > Let me put it this way, my other half has to be able to press
> > one of two
> > buttons to control the house...period! All she has to do is
> > either tell
> > the house that she is going to bed alone or that we are both
going
to
> > bed. Now I'd wager money that as the kid gets a bit older that
she
may
>
> Nice.  What do you have - a mini/maxi controller or timer maybe by the
> bedside which sends
> a signal to a virtual device in HV which then switchs on/off the
actual
> devices?
> (Am I getting the hang of this yet????)
>
> I could get away with a minitimer on the basis that it is an alarm
clock
> (though she was just given
> a clock radio as an xmas pressie :() but pronto's upstairs would not
be an
> option :(
>
> > From what you've said I'm assuming that at the moment you do
> > not have a
> > controller running and that is essential in doing what you want
to
> > achieve here and it will open a whole host of opportunities for
you.
>
> I've been looking @ Homeseer, but haven't yet had the time to play
with it
> properly.  I am going to
> resurrect a 1/2 built PC as a home controller to run this, CDJ, etc to
> control everything once my
> 4 port serial controller arrives.
> ATM, HV is not an option, but knowing me as I do, if it turns out that
HV
> will do more for me than HS,
> then I may well (eventually) end up with that.
>
> As I have said, rewiring the house is not on the cards, so I really
just
> want to start small and say,
> automate the Zamps (which started this conversation all those posts
ago!),
> then add in the TV etc etc.
> Not that I'll be saving huge amounts of power or anything, but it'll
be
> simple, it'll be a start....
>
> Do you know if I would be able to get HS (or HV) to 'capture' the
LW10U
> signal so that when I switch it
> on, it will in fact tell it to go to 10% or something to stop the
glaring
> lights effect?
>
> > All the rest is just programming really, the hard part is getting
the
> > hardware then getting the hardware where you want it.
>
> And then figuring out what to do with it and how to do it!
>
> Actually, just looking at the powerflash module (getting back to
> controlling
> the ZAmps,
> the blurb says 'sends an X10 signal to receiver devices when a contact
> closure is made
> or a low voltage (6-18V AC, DC or Audio) is applied to its terminals'
> suggesting I could trigger it from the line level input to it?
> Or would it be unsuitable because every gap between the music would
cause
> an
> off and then on signal to be sent?
> Also, I'm a bit wary of introducing noise to my audio signals - have
you
> ever experienced this with X10 and audio?
>
> cheers,
>
>
> Tony
>
>
> ********************************************************************
>       Visit our Internet site at http://www.rbsmarkets.com
>
> This e-mail is intended only for the addressee named above.
> As this e-mail may contain confidential or privileged information,
> if you are not the named addressee, you are not authorised to
> retain, read, copy or disseminate this message or any part of it.
> ********************************************************************
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>
> For more information: http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
> Post message: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subscribe:  ukha_d-subscribe@xxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe:  ukha_d-unsubscribe@xxxxxxx
> List owner:  ukha_d-owner@xxxxxxx
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/