Imagine pulling your car into your driveway, late at night. It's very, very dark -- but with a quick button press on your keychain remote, your driveway floodlight and front porch light come on. You walk up to your front door, press your keychain remote again and your house lights come on. One more quick press, and the outside lights go off. This is one example of the powers of X10 home automation. With X10 home automation, you can remotely control lights and applicances, schedule lights to turn on and off automatically, or turn on / off lights automatically when you enter or leave a room. Plus much, much more. What exactly is X10 home automation? X10 technology was developed in the late 1970s. It is a communications system that uses your standard household wiring as its "network". Various X10 modules that you simply plug into your household wall sockets "talk" to each other to make home automation magic. An X10 command consists of two parts - "what to do" and "who should do it". The first part, "what to do" is usually something like turn on, turn off, dim to 50%. The "who should do it" part needs some explaining. Each receiving or listening X10 module has an address. This address consists of a housecode and a unit code. Examples of valid addresses are A1, B16, D10. You can set the address on each X10 module in your system. Each module will only respond to commands that are addressed to it. (Actually, this is not completely true. There is a "panic" mode in X10 security where you can instantly turn ON all X10 controlled lights with the press of one button. But you get the general idea). Let's use our late night arrival scenario as an example. Our flood lights and porch lights have been set to the same address of A9. Our X10 connected interior houselights are set to A10. When we press the first ON button on the keychain remote, an X10 command sent to A9 and the X10 modules that have an A9 address will turn on. The beauty of X10 home automation is that you can start with a simple system. Many X10 modules simply plug into a standard wall socket and are ready to go. There are also more advanced modules that involve some basic household wiring -- if you have ever added or changed a ceiling fan or light than you would be comfortable with "hard wired" X10 modules. Want to take X10 home automation to the next level? Add computer control to your X10 automation. Using your home computer and X10 computer interface and software, you can create timers for X10 devices, create macros (basically a series of commands to be executed) and lots more. The beauty of X10 home automation - start slow and simple, then as your needs and interests grow, your X10 home automation can grow with you ! |
