Re: Beginner at X10 - general questions

[Raymond <Reb.barnett@xxxxxxx>]

> From: Dr John Tankard [mailto:jtankard@xxxxxxx]
> Personally I dont believe the PC is the best way, unless you
> use a Linux
> box, W9x is just not reliable enough to run your house,

I agree and disagree with what you say. Windows 9x isn't very reliable,
but then I wouldn't consider using that for an application that needs to
be running continuosly - Windows NT is the tool for the job. This is a
more expensive approach than Linux, but has the advantage of easier and
more rapid development, so you can prototype ideas more quickly. There's
just as much free software for Windows, and plenty more commercial
products.

> When my PC conks I dont want to be without heat light and
> power untill I can
> get a spare power supply HD etc. The HomeVision unit might
> also fail but

I personally think it would be very poor design for any system to have a
critical dependancy on any one component. HomeVision, Comfort or a PC
may each be very reliable, but things still fail. Even a low chance of
coming home and not being able to switch on a light, control the heating
or answer the phone is too risky for me. I'm trying to design everything
so there is a manual fall back. If for not better reason than as your
putting it together you can guarantee glitches, and a wife who can't
switch the light on and run a bath is not a happy wife - voice of
experience ;-(

My strategy is to have in place manual systems as the first line of
operation - light switches and a boiler on/off switch. The second line
of operation is Comfort - if all is working well Comfort is in charge.
The third tier is the PC, providing a higher level of control over
Comfort - this has the advantage of a more friendly user interface, and
quicker/more powerful programming.

More things may go wrong this way, because I have more interfaces, but
hopefully the consequences of a device failing will be so small that
noone (the wife) will notice.

Just my 2p.

Ray Barnett.

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