X10 and VIOM Xap ?

["Marcus Warrington" <marcusw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been slowly wiring our house to allow X10 control of the lights using
DIN mounted modules. I've been running a new T&E wire from each ceiling
rose back to the X10 node 0 consumer unit and then rewiring the ceiling
rose to send the switched live wire to the LD11 and returning the live to
the light down the other. Power for the LD11's was tapped from the lighting
circuit in node0.  This has all been successful , but I now have a couple
of issues.

The hallway lights are controlled by 4 , 1 gang switch plates each with 3
switches (one on each landing, one in downstairs hall and one in
vestibule). I'm having trouble finding 1 gang with 3 momentary switches,
and even if I did how do I "rewire" the current 4 way switching
to allow any of the 4 switches to give a momentary press ? One option I
have thought of is to use an AD10 instead of an LD11, since these allow
normal switches to toggle to light. I could simply wire the AD10 switch
wire to the current switched live feed so that if any switch toggled the
switched live feed the AD10 would toggle. I think this would work and would
be easy to implement BUT it would mean no dimming.

Another option would be to use a VIOM unit to monitor the switch and then
pulse a relay for .5 of second when the switch changes state i.e. emulate
what the AD10 does. This would effectively convert the existing light
switch into a momentary switch. This would also allow me to use LD11
instead AD10 units and so retain the dimming facility (although not via the
switch control i.e. no long press). I'd prefer to keep the dimming facility
because I plan on implementing occupancy detection lighting and like the
idea of the light only coming on at 40% brightness if I get out of bed in
the middle of the night

It occurs to me that buying some VIOM units may actually also enable me to
overcome a couple of my big concerns with X10. If I wired the relay board
into the top of the LD11 i.e. made it control the switching the I could
have control of the lights via xAP messages, overcoming the time lag of X10
since the LD11 would effectively be using local control. I guess it would
also be possible to have the VIOM monitor the "live" feed out
from the LD11 and send a xAP message when the state changes (or a request
is made) thereby implementing a form of status response ?

Does any of this sound plausible.. safe.. advisable ?

Has anyone done it already  ?

Regards

Marcus