Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!pyramid!athertn!ericb From: ericb@athertn.Atherton.COM (Eric Black) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Serial Ports Message-ID: <226@mango.athertn.Atherton.COM> Date: 22 Sep 88 19:49:15 GMT References: <5660017@hpcvca.HP.COM> <6418@dasys1.UUCP> <5843@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: ericb@mango.UUCP (Eric Black) Organization: Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 52 In article <5843@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> whitcomb@unicorn.Berkeley.EDU (Gregg Whitcomb) writes: > >> I want to connect an X-10 home controller to my amiga. The controller >> talks to a serial port. That should be a transparent background task. >> >I only know of one X-10 controller for PCs, and it is a stand-alone box which only needs to be programmed once then forgotten (at least until you want to reprogram your schedule). I can't understand why you want a background task for this purpose. Of course, using a switch box >is not ideal, but more financially practical. > Here's a reason: explicit control NOW. I have various sensors around my house and property -- car detector in the driveway, temperature sensors at top and bottom of the living room with cathedral ceiling, woodstove, and a ceiling fan to mix warm air from the top down to the bottom, and so on. I want to be able to turn lights, fans, various things on and off in response to those sensors, and also manually with the X-10 command modules. I'd much rather interface to the subsonic carrier on the 110VAC line through an RS232 port than, say, opto-isolators simulating buttons on a cannibalized command module, or even worse, directly synthesizing and injecting the command signals on the house wiring. My Amiga is on all the time, 24 hours (hate those impulses running through non-ideal capacitors at power-on, dontcha know). Sounds to me like a reasonable thing to do. >On the subject of the X-10 system, does anyone know of a device which >can read events from the line (and thus allow a program to keep >track of what's going on in the house). No doubt, you would want >to have a dedicated serial line for such a device. > I'd like that very much, too, for reasons that should now be obvious. Some time ago I wrote to BSR to suggest that they consider modifying the units so that when activated locally they sent a special command code with their unit ID out on the wire. A suitably smart eavesdropper would be able to know that the unit is now ON, manually, but other units would not respond by turning themselves on (although that would be quite handy in some situations, too). I also suggested that some remote sensing devices might be handy as well, using the same carrier-current technology, such as remote thermometers and the like. A command module just like their timer controller with eavesdropping capability and programmed differently could then poll for remote temperature, remote on/off status, and so on, and display it on the readout. I don't know which round bin they filed my suggestions in... :-) >-Gregg Whitcomb whitcomb@ic.berkeley.edu -- Eric Black "Garbage in, Gospel out" Atherton Technology, 1333 Bordeaux Dr., Sunnyvale, CA, 94089 UUCP: {sun,decwrl,hpda,pyramid}!athertn!ericb Domainist: ericb@Atherton.COM