X.10 for lighting - still limited???

["Harrison, Mark (Alliance)" <Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx>]

Any X.10 gurus out there???

The last time I looked at X.10 for lighting it was fairly limited in terms
of its dimming capabilities. In particular, you couldn't go from zero to an
arbitrary setting (say 70%). Instead, you had to go all the way on, and
then
dim back to the required state.

This proved to be unnaceptable for a current client (who is himself a
lighting-designer), because he needed to be able to go straight to set dim
levels at night.

We went for a whole set of NJD MIDI lighting controllers, which not only
can
be given fancy fade effects through a cheap PC/soundcard combo, but will
also take the kind of high-impedance loads that in-line halogen dimmers
present. It actually worked surprisingly well, considering that we thought
we might have to end up using DMX kit which is rather more expensive. Of
course, there was a significant amount of programming work involved in
interfacing the (MIDI) lighting control back to the HA software.

Clearly, doing everything through X.10 would cut down tremendously on the
workload, and allow us to use a lot more off-the-shelf components...

Does anyone have experience/views on this? HA Consultancy isn't my
full-time
job (yet).

Mark Harrison
-Home Automation Consultancy with No Good Trading Name-
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