RE: DIY HA bus

[James Hoye <jhoye@xxxxxxx>]

At 09:46 17/07/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >there was mention of lighting controllers and how you could
> have a switch to
> >turn all lights on/off etc.
>
> X10 allows that sort of thing, at a fairly basic level.

I was thinking more along the lines of having a dedicated hard-wired bus
rather than X10, given the fact that signals sometimes get lost, line
interferance, limited number of house/appliance codes (Mike H, you must be
pushing this limit!), and the cost of the units.  A home-modified push
switch with a DS id chip would cost very little (I think).

>  > activated.  Some clever software (well, not too clever)
> could then map these
> >ids to some DIN mounted relays via some serial interface.
> Each relay would
> >be connected to a single light.
>
> Yup, you can do all that, if I understood you correctly,
> either using X10
> or a wired system, either controlled by a PC or a standalone
> controller.

I was thinking along the lines of writing your own software to do this on a
Win/Linux box.  The interfaces (id bus -> PC and PC->relays) would be
built
using DS kits/own/group expertise.  The cost of dedicated controllers and
their functionality vary, and doing it yourself you could have exactly what
you wanted for modest cost.

> Been done, should work, costs money, various different systems
> available.  But I might have missed some subtlety in your
> question asking
> about some aspect that _hasn't_ been done, so you don't have
> to shut up :-)

I was just thinking of a more DIY approach, to give the kind of flexibility
of the more expensive dedicated controllers.  And more fun too (if you like
that sort of thing).

> X10, Homevision, Comfort etc spring to mind and there are
> other ones like
> InstaBus, CAN etc which I'm not so familiar with- if none of
> those mean
> anything to you, have a look at Mark McCall's pages at
> http://www.automatedhome.co.uk .

InstaBus was what I was thinking about (but couldn't recall).  Sort of a
cheap, DIY InstaBus......

James (H)

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