RE: All Lights On/All Units Off and Modifying an MT10

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

> > Anyone know the reason why X10 controllers tend to have All
Lights On
> > buttons but no All Lights Off? All Units Off isn't nearly as
useful. How
> > likely am I to want to turn off the entire house?
>
> Surely the "All Lights On" and "All Units Off" are
inmplemented for safety
> reasons ... I assume the thinking is that in an emergency you
> would want to
> turn on all the lights to light your way out of the house or to scare
away
> burglars or if an appliance that was connected to an X10 appliance
module
> was "misbehaving" (I always cringe at the standard X10 claim
of "You can
> have your coffee ready when you get up" as I see the damn thing
running
> dry!) then you can kill everything instantly...

Yeah which also explains why there is no 'All Units On' even present in the
protocol. 'All Lights On' is "advertised" as a security feature.
'All Lights
Off' is in the protocol (binary code 1101) which is why it is noticeably
absent functionality on the mass produced controllers.

> ...of course you do have to have all of your stuff on the one damn
> housecode!

An unfortunate limitation but not one that bothers me for these commands
due
to my choices of house codes.

> (Whoever thought that 16 devices per house would be enough should
> be locked
> up with whichever dickhead said "640kb is more than enough Mr.
Gates"!)

I think the reason is exactly the same as the original memory limits on PCs
and the reason for the Y2K problems and even September 9/10 2001 time
problems. Not people thinking it would/would not be enough, but providing
what was possible at as cheap a possible a price by saving bits and bytes.

The other thing I would suggest is who in the 70s could ever had said their
gizmo would still be in use 30 years later in almost the original form
given
the high turnover rate of technology there was no perceived need to
"future
proof".

The protocol is being "bodged" at the moment to maintain
backwards
compatibility with existing kit which although nice for existing
installations will IMO continue to hold the protocol back in the long term.

Mark.


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