Re: Trying to work with a CM11A under Linux

Is your computer a PC? Is your jukebox a software product such as J River Media Center, Music Match, etc?

Are you sure that house doesn't have "split phase"? Split phase is single phase

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jack Ak wrote (in ) about 'OEM chips for X-10 available?', on Wed, 9 Feb 2005:

The arguments over whether 120-0-120 is 'two phase' or 'split phase' is interminable and futile. It's both, depending on how you define it. I think we can rule out 'neither', but I'm not 100% sure.(;-)

Hello Jack,

Yes, sorry for not being specific, it is split phase. The utility guys still called it two-phase. We do have 240V for large appliances.

Regards, Joerg

True 2-phase power is rare nowadays, When it's supplied at all, it's supplied as two 220V split-phase circuits in quadrature. There are still some 20phase motors around, but they are run from Scott T transformers. In New York City, the power company must supply three-phase power on request. When my cousins built adjacent houses in Staten Island and insisted on 3-phase power, it was provided from a Scott T that tied into a nearby two-phase feeder. Later, that feed was changed over to three-phase ans the transformer bank eliminated.

For systems with line-to-neutral voltages of 120, split phase is 240 line-to-line, 2 phase is 170, and 2 drops from three phases on the pole

-- a common residential service in three-phase areas -- is 208. (208 volt single-phase home appliances are available.)

Jerry

Hello John,

True. But Jack has a point. We do have three phase at the 10KV level. The individual transformers are hooked up to two wires each, in a round robin fashion along the HV line to even out the load.

Regards, Joerg

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jerry Avins wrote (in ) about 'OEM chips for X-10 available?', on Thu, 10 Feb 2005:

'2 phase' in itself doesn't demand that the interphase angle is 90 degrees. I SAID that argument was pointless.

Problem solved!!

There were two certain problems and possible delay/timing problems (i.e. adding in the Es for delay).

1. Indeed, filling tel 1 (301) with Fs seems to be needed for cell phone calls. The cell number has to be in tel 2 (302).

1. After fixing 1 above, the dialer was making the call but it did NOT go through. I determined this using J. Rojas' excellent advice of listening in while the dialer made the call. Seems my local telephone provider was not setup to take any long distance calls. I got around this by pre-pending a 'dial around' code in tel 2 (I used 1010636) before my 1+AC+7digit cell number.

The panel communicator is up and working fine now!

If anyone wants my actual section programming, please advise here and I will post.

Dennis E

Would you accept a six-phase rectifier bank that had all phases in the same quadrant? The language problem arises because there are two uses of "two phase", both legitimate.

Whenever two separate wires, not in phase, carry power, the system has two phases and is loosely called 2-phase. (The common phase differences are 180. 120, and 90 degrees. If 135 degrees were supplied, that would also be two phases.)

The technical use implies 90 degrees. See what a 2-phase motor needs for power. Look up the connections and turns ratios needed for a transformer bank that converts between 2-phase and 3-phase (Scott T) and see what angles are involved.

Both the loose and the technical usages have their places. Arguing about which is "right" is not so much pointless as beside the point.

Jerry

It seems interesting that none of these technologies has made significant inroads into meter reading for smaller customers. About the only development that has been widely adopted is a hand held computer to replace the meter reading book.

There has been talk of these systems going hand in hand with demand side management eg real time pricing, but efforts to reduce the cost of these systems to a lever where they are worth adopting seem so far to be without success.

The most successful niche seems to be a low bandwidth system for rural areas (where meter reading costs are very high) which does not require transformer bridging (

They are pretty cheap, fairly low resolution cameras but for the money

not too bad. Just don't think of them as a serious surveillance system.

Think of it as a toy.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jerry Avins wrote (in ) about 'OEM chips for X-10 available?', on Thu, 10 Feb 2005:

What's the difference? (;-)

But I agree.

Ha, I *will* bias you. There is a dial, which indicates house code

There is a switch near the bottom front of the unit to select which group of 8 codes the palmpad controls

There are two columns of 9 buttons

The top 8 pairs of buttons represent on (left) and off (right) for unit codes 1-8 or 9-16 (as determined by a manual switch on the bottom)

The bottom two buttons of each column will send a dim or brighten command to the house code as determined by the dial

Well, not to say that i can, but i can remember that the living room is "A", bathroom is "B" etc... (not that that's my configuration)

I've not gone far enough into it to have that sort of thing... Our system is really simple. We mostly have lights on X10... with no real conditionals. (that might change if i get a "house basestation" computer built from the pleathora of carcasses i have laying about) We typically use about 4 by switch, the rest are on motion based control and come on as needed. (there are also switches for those lights... but they are hardly ever used)

Much of your description can be done if you have a computer interface. All you do is set up macros. (you do lose the signal space of half the units of any given house code for each "uniquely configured" palmpad.)

Programming from the palmpad is not available with the computer control program.... only at the computer. Also, if you want conditionals (IF it's dark THEN turn on the light) you'll need hardware that X10 doesn't sell directly. (or can the new CM17a (?) unit do that?)

Also shift-buttoning is not currently available... but could certainly be done.

Your design sounds nifty, but the premise i was going on was a single transmitter which could easily send all 256 codes. You were going for the "ultimate X10 remote"

Having different goals naturally led us to different designs.

Given the specs to which Dave gave the link, i think my interface design would only change slightly:

IF (First press)=(top 16 buttons) THEN Change house code of pad to First_press Get(second_press, (5 second timeout)) IF (Second_press = (top 16 buttons) ) THEN Change unit code of device to Second_press Get(third_press, (5 second timeout)) ELSE IF First_press = DIM THEN Send OFF on stored house/unit-code ELSE Send ON on stored house/unit-code ENDIF ENDIF ELSE IF First_press = DIM THEN Send DIM on stored housecode ELSE Send BRIGHT on stored housecode ENDIF ENDIF

(ummm this is a quick runthrough i think it covers what i have in mind)

Only 100 Mbps? That's a hell of a lot more then dial-up, which is the only hope of any Internet access at all (save satellite) in much of the USA where cable is not available and DSL lines are not available either due to DSL's numerous limitations. It's a lot more then DSL capabilities and cable broadband offerings too.

You forget that the power utilities aren't setting out to do this to become Internet companies, they were looking for efficient ways to communicate with their meters (and utility controlled thermostats). Being able to offer and sell Internet broadband access is a nice side effect of having the infrastructure.

PPL has done quite nicely the last few years and is a fairly conservatively run company.

Maybe where you live. Here the gas company reads the meter electronically via radio as they drive down the street and similar story for the electricity company.

Yes, don't expect to jam them all together. Some things don't need the same levels of complexity or performance. If I were looking into it I'd seriously considering an IP based network; either wired ethernet or WiFi. TCP and UDP allow for varying application needs. That and a lot of work has already been done in the protocol stacks and component chips for handling it.

-Bill Kearney

Don Lancaster wrote: (snip)

You should try a *new* Diablo. Much better. ;-)

What is a good all around indoor camera? Something ideal would be:

I've tried the $50 Home Depot Lorex and $79 Radio Shack cameras, and they aren't cutting it. The best bang for the buck I've used so far is the Core Technology Multicam/Poolcam, but they are black/white only, and I would like color for the baby monitoring.

Robert