RE: Digest Number 5581

["Marcus Warrington" <marcusw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob,

> I actually rewired all my wall switches to momentary ones to be sure
> the LD11 get the on/off when I want.

Absolutely, all the light switches are being replaced with (cheap) B&Q
"Press" switches. The problem I have is that these only come in
the one
switch on a single gang flavour, and the hallways need 3 switches on
a single gang.

> Currently investigating on how to do occupancy detection the smart
&
> cheap and easy way.

I have the same desire, which is why I was asking about VIOM units.
LD10 units don't remember their last dim setting so at least you know
they are always starting at 100% so your 2 second pause would always
equal roughly 50%. I wish LD11's could have a way of disabling the
"remember last dim" feature. I believe the LD10/LD11 is just a
software
change so it may be possible to reprogram a LD11 back to a LD10 ?

I also find that the ramp up speed is a little slow for my liking i.e.
I hit the wall switch and am a few steps into the room before the light
is bright enough to really see where I'm going. I wish it were possible
to set the ramp up/down speed.

> I've experimented with the MS13 sensors but the delay is too long

Yeah, I've tried that to. In my case I had a PC doing the actual light
switching so it was even worse.I'm sure that much of the delay came rom
the fact that there was 3 comms paths i.e. RF -> X10 -> PC -> X10
- Light.
There is an RF receiver that you can get that takes the RF signal direct
from the MS13 into the PC, so that should mean only one X10 comms delay.
X10 comms seems to take roughly a second to send a signal.

Marcus
---- original message ---
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 13:44:29 -0000
From: "egelbeertje" <r_d_k@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: X10 and VIOM Xap ?

Hi Marcus,

I actually rewired all my wall switches to momentary ones to be sure
the LD11 get the on/off when I want.
Currently investigating on how to do occupancy detection the smart &
cheap and easy way. Closing a relay (driven by a PIR) parallel to the
momentary switch for about 2 seconds will give you about 50% light
level (if the previous state of the LD11 was 100%) so I did not
figure it out completely yet how to always get it to reset to 100%.
I've experimented with the MS13 sensors but the delay is too long -
I'm halfway the corridor before the lights go on so I'm going to
abandon that option pretty soon I hope.
I'm thinking of putting an Ocelot controller with light level sensor
in between to get some brains into my X10 setup and hopefully not to
induce more delays. Suggestions welcome.

rgds Rob.