Re: UK light switches available

[Nigel Orr <nigel.orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 15:34 07/01/99 -0000, you wrote:
>You're not alone in being uncomfortable about X-10 in this mailing
list.

That's reassuring ;-)

>(The worse news is that the place still hasn't got a working floor,
>which goes a long way to explaining why the fancier stuff has been
>delayed!)

And I thought having the wrong colour of walls was bad... trying hard to
imagine a 'non-working floor...

>The other change is that we're now flood-wiring with CAT5 anyway...

That's what I'm toying with at the moment, whether to wire cat-5 to each
light fitting, and each other controllable item, or just to an IR
transmitter in the corner of the room, and have an IR receiver on the
ceiling rose controlling a basic switch/dimmer circuit... I suspect the
latter is more sensible, keeps data away from mains wiring, is easily
extended etc etc- only snag is the difficulty of getting feedback from the
controlled item- the original plan was to use Dallas Semi ibuttons and
other microLAN bits which seem ideal for this sort of application.

Fortunately, I have no urgency to get the house automated, so I can
experiment a bit- as long as I get the audio and video distributed soonish-
then I can have entertainment while I work on the rest!  I know Keith D is
doing component level stuff- are there other electronics folks on the list
planning the same, rather than buying plug&play kit?

Nigel
--
Nigel Orr                  Research Associate   O   ______
Underwater Acoustics Group,              o / o    \_/(
Dept of Electrical and Electronic Engineering     (_   <   _ (
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne             \______/ \(

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