Controlling electrical sockets via internet?
David Gould
Southern
"David Gould" <da...@deep-trance.com> wrote in message
news:4f6r3voce5t6ehj7u...@4ax.com...
yes...
Low cost approach would be a 24/7 PC, Homeseer, a CM11a and a X10 outlet or
wall wart.
David Gould
Ballenger) wrote:
>>Is there any simple, cheap technology to do this yet?
>
>You can set up to use the X10 firecracker to control the X10
>light and appliance modules via the internet, basically for the
>price of the firecracker kit.
Thanks guys.
I should have mentioned, I am in the UK.
Big Blue
really for internet control you could hash something yourself up using the
parallel port and some relays on long wires, otherwise X10 is going be your
best bet IMHO.
if you need to know where to buy X10, get back to us.
ALi
Eric Gauthier
wrote:
>Is there any simple, cheap technology to do this yet?
>
>Dave, http://www.deep-trance.com
I have a firecracker on the serial port of my Linux box. I use bottle
rocket on the Linux box to send commands to the firecracker which in
turn sends them to an X10 transeiver. I think the X10 hardware
involved is under $20.
I then use a very simple php program to create the HTML and execute
the commands. This is all then available via wireless LAN and my
iPaq.
Here is a sample (execute statements commented out so you guys can't
mess with me!!). I am not an HTML, PHP, or Perl programmer, so be
gentle. As a matter of fact this is my first PHP program. The HTML
looks horrible, and could certainly be made to look nicer, but it
suits my needs for now.
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/index.php
Here is the code (normal disclaimers apply)
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/index.php.txt
I also have a very simple perl script for cron that reads a table
(x10daily) and schedules at jobs. For example, I can have a line like
this in a file called x10daily:
17 15 5 C 4 ON
This will turn C4 on at 17:15 +- 5 minutes. It can also use external
programs/events (e.g. sunset) that return HH:MM. As well as combine
a command (necessary for some serialization problems with the
firecracker) Like this:
SUNSET 5 15 C 4 ON,DIM -3
This will turn device C4 on at (sunset+5 minutes) +- 15 minutes and
then DIM C4 to a relative -3.
You can get this here:
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/x10.pl
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/x10daily
I have not implemented all X10, to be honest, I don't remember what
state some of the commands like AON and AOFF are. For the PHP program
you would have to do something to generate the HTML for each specific
House code. Easy enough, but I haven't had a need yet for it.
constructive criticism welcome, encouraged even. Sarcasm about my
coding skills will be ignored ;^)
-Eric
----------
Remove "I HATE SPAM" to reply
Eric Gauthier
Well my web site has been getting hit like crazy on these, so I
decided to update the Perl script so you can specify multiple device
ideas in the x10daily file. So now something like:
SUNSET 0 15 C 1,4,5 ON
Will turn on devices 1 4 & 5 at sunset+-15.
I have updated the Perl and the x10daily file at:
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/x10.pl
http://www.gauthier-family.org/~eric/samples/x10daily
By the way, I forgot to mention that the external event code for
SUNSET and SUNRISE that I use is a simple package called today that
has 2 programs (sunset and sunrise) that return HH:MM.
Jeff McDonald
DOS window works under command line.
Extremely simple batch files are then an intermediary. Windows 98 task
scheduler can handle these for prescheduled events.
I found some freeare bat to com, and com to exe converters. Bat to Exe was
for whatever reason, hard to find.
Something called POPTRAY checks my email server every 5 minutes for a very
specific subject line that only I know. (Actually two; one ends in on-- the
other, off.) This doubles as a password. Outlook express has "message
rules" where something with this subject stays on the server, so it doesn't
accidentally download it. Poptray then runs the .exe; it would be several
steps easier if it did .bat but such is life...
I have a webserver on my intranet; my router blocks it from outside. I
could port forward (cable modem) but this could raise the ire of my isp and
I don't want/need this anyway. I got Perl for windows somewhere, and a free
webserver with cgi-bin. Perl has a "system" command that runs batch files
on the host computer; I made an html frontend and can quite easily control
whatnot from within the house. (Perl also apparently has direct com port
control but I didn't want to get into that.)
Sorry I don't have links for where I got this stuff, but I think I
remembered the names pretty well. ;P
"Eric Gauthier" <IegauHATE...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:dssk5vkc0buofukl4...@4ax.com...
MarcoSalden
Linux or perhaps a link to these? I am also looking for controlling
sockets using a Linux box but am very new to home automation (alas,
already al little bit familiar with X10 though).
Thanks in advance,
Marco
Eric Gauthier
wrote:
>Eric Gauthier <IegauHATE...@attbi.com> wrote in message news:<dssk5vkc0buofukl4...@4ax.com>...
>> On Sun, 02 Feb 2003 22:31:46 GMT, David Gould <da...@deep-trance.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Is there any simple, cheap technology to do this yet?
>> >
>> >Dave, http://www.deep-trance.com
>>
>> I have a firecracker on the serial port of my Linux box. I use bottle
>> rocket on the Linux box to send commands to the firecracker which in
>> turn sends them to an X10 transeiver. I think the X10 hardware
>> involved is under $20.
>Can anyone tell me (Eric?) what a firecracker and bottle rocket is for
>Linux or perhaps a link to these? I am also looking for controlling
>sockets using a Linux box but am very new to home automation (alas,
>already al little bit familiar with X10 though).
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Marco
Marco,
bottlerocket is a simple command line interface to talk to the
Firecracker that hangs off of the Serial port. The firecracker
(CM17A) is simply a transmitter that takes commands from the serial
port and sends them to your X10 Transceiver. I don't know if you can
buy the firecracker seperately. I bought mine off of Ebay, included
in a starter kit with a lamp module, firecracker, tranceiver and
remote control for under $30. It was called an X10 starter kit or
something.
Bottle Rocket can be had from here:
http://mlug.missouri.edu/~tymm/
Keep in mind that there are other Unix or LInux utilities to do stuff
with the Firecracker. Search using google using keywords firecracker
linux x10.
Dave Houston
Also keep in mind that the Firecracker sends 310MHz RF and will not be able
to communicate with 433.92MHz X-10 transceiver modules used in the
Netherlands. X-10 Europe has a 433.92MHz version of the MR26E but I haven't
heard of plans for a 433.92MHz Firecracker.
However, there are inexpensive 433.92MHz RF transmitters (under $US10) that
you could drive directly under Linux from a serial port or parallel port
using the same techniques as used by LIRC. In fact, it's even easier as all
you need to generate is the data envelope - the RF transmitter module
supplies the carrier.
These pages may be helpful...
http://www.laser.com/dhouston/multi.htm
http://www.laser.com/dhouston/codegen.htm
CodeGen (Windows only) will generate all of the X-10 data signals as CCF hex
codes. I can add a RAW option, if anyone is interested in doing this.
An advantage of doing it this way is that you can also communicate with any
433.92MHz receiver (e.g. Philips SBC modules, thermostats, etc.) instead of
just X-10.
---
http://www.laser.com/dhouston/
Neil Cherry
>>Linux or perhaps a link to these? I am also looking for controlling
>>sockets using a Linux box but am very new to home automation (alas,
>>already al little bit familiar with X10 though).
Eric, others have given you the info on Bottlerocket (software) a the
Friecracker (hardware, AKA CM17). Here's one omre link for general
Linux & HA stuff:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ncherry/
Sorry for the self advert. :-)
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry nch...@comcast.net
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ncherry/ (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)