Need Controller Recommendations for Linux (alternative to Insteon)

I've been working with the Insteon V2 USB and it's becoming clear that getting it to work with Linux in a robust manner will be a royal pain. I mean just as a straight X10 controller, I'm not overly concerned about Insteon itself.

I want to get people's opinions on what the best X10 controller is, given these priorities:

  1. Must work and be reliable (that is, after making the allowances for X10 reliability in general).

  1. Must support the full range of X10 commands, house/unit codes, querying of devices, etc.

  2. Must be easy to program under Linux. When I say "easy" I mean whatever API I use should already work and be well understood.

I don't want to feel like I'm the first one trying to do something, and that's exactly what it's like with Insteon and USB.

I also want to be able to do all my work in user-space and not have to build my own device drivers or hack on the kernel level (like what Neil Cherry is doing). I've been trying to get the Linux USB HID interface to work but no one seems to know how to do it and I've got better things to do with my life.

I am really interested to hear what other Linux users are doing with this issue and what the most popular controllers are.

Thanks, as always.

Reply to
Richard S. Smith
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Probably the best X10 computer interface is the ACT TI103.

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Meets your criteria:

1) Reliable. ACT makes the best two way X10 hardware (industrial/commercial grade). (extra features such as polite/rude mode, selectable retransmission attempts, etc.)

2) Supports full X10 and A10 commands.

3) Programmable with simple ASCII commands.

Reply to
none

Take a look at Heyu

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You should be able to download and install it in 10 minutes or less. The four man pages and running 'heyu help' (which will work without any hardware connected) will show you its capabilities. If you think Heyu will meet your needs, then get the CM11A controller which it operates (and a Linux-compatible USB->Serial adapter if you don't have an RS232 serial port on your system).

Regards, Charles Sullivan

Reply to
Charles Sullivan

Thanks for the replies.

I am leaning towards the ACT TI-103. I started with the O'Reilly "Smart Home Hacks" book and I'm surprised the authors did not mention it since it seems like a good controller to start with if you are a casual programmer and you want to teach yourself how X10 works and see results quickly.

Plus I liked the articles by "Uncle Phil" on the ACT web site. ;-)

Reply to
Richard S. Smith

It's not well known and that's probably one small problem. It's definitely an industrial controller and the protocol seems setup for a multidrop environment (RS485 type stuff). The one thing I find irksome is the need to poll it for incoming X10/A10 strings. Granted you only need to do it once every second (1/2 seccond is probably better). It accepts ASCII commands (straight text, don't think it needs a CR) and the commands are not overly complex. It does handle extended codes.

Reply to
Neil Cherry

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