RE: x-10 hardware documentation

[Kevin Hawkins]

Hi Alex - welcome to the list !

Most of the talk here is focussed on xAP itself rather than X10
although X10 can interact very nicely with xAP and there are xAP schemas in
place to facilitate this.
X10 is essential a whole other area and you will find lots of
information on the internet covering this - a good place would be the X10
main site - and their support area at <a href="http://www.x10.com/support/support.htm";>http://www.x10.com/support/support.htm</a>
- unfortunately this site is one of the worst offenders for push
advertising
- pop ups etc. There are many other sites of a technical nature around X10
and a Google search will be rewarding. You can also find helpful people on
the UKHA main list as almost everyone there uses X10 to varying levels.
To answer some specific issues you raised.. You can have 16 devices
on each of 16 housecodes with X10 - so 256 total devices. The communication
is by a signal superimposed over the mains wiring - it is unfortunately not
100% reliable and not inherently error checked or guaranteed delivery so it
can be a little quirky in use - however it is cheap and cheerful
(particularly in the US)where the costs are way lower and the range of
products more extensive. The transmission speed is relatively slow by
network standards - I can't remember offhand the exact time for each
transmission but I think it's around 20 cycles of the mains or so and hence
expect about a half second delay for anything to happen.
xAP is essentially a protocol definition aimed at the
interconnection of various disparate devices to allow them to exchange
information or control each other is some way. As such it is independent of
the physical interconnection between devices which could be any electrical
connection capable of exchanging data although typically this is a serial
interconnect or network (Ethernet). The networks are linked via a software
bridge application (should you have several networks which in practice very
few people do have). Your networks must also be interconnected physically -
perhaps by a standard hardware router.
The speed of message transmission on xAP is simply dictated by your
physical interconnect speed so at say 10-100MB/s it is to all intents and
purposes instantaneous. Some xAP applications are designed to talk directly
to each other (although as you will have read every xAP application can
hear
everyone else) - some people will implement xAP through a central
controller
which will act as a coordinator for all the xAP traffic. Really the
solution
is dependant on your needs.

Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Ciurea [mailto:<a
href="/group/xap_automation/post?postID=e3MnMPV9_e6vD1cN6hpF3aqecqDZneFPZu-nNSsuLjzbr_zJ7oBwwKVZvYMgKqdsxHwE">alex@v...</a>]
> Sent: 15 April 2003 08:10
> To: <a
href="/group/xap_automation/post?postID=q6ArhKsvp9FVEmaDfSjQAZBIOHUZsuGH93-8ZQOTJmrNFrUSTQeBBxKIKsA31RsDcbGO4xe7iPPcyjRDoI2ezRFD0ucU">xap_automation@xxxxxxx</a>
> Subject: [xap_automation] x-10 hardware documentation
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm new to this protocol and I could'n find a summary
> documentation about X10.
>
> Where I could find a brief documentation about x-10
> protocol? What hardware do I need to start my own
> application?
>
> I need simple facts, like how many devices can I use
> in a x-10 network, how fast can I send the commands to
> my devices, what interface is used for decodeing the
> xAP commands, how can I interlink two or more xAP
> networks... etc...
>
> I've read some articles from www.xapautomation.org and
> I've understood how I can identify my devices, and
> other stuff (what can I say, those guys have done
> their homeworks because there's a lot of detailed
> documentation about xAP) but nothing practical about
> x-10.
>
>
> Thanks alot for your time and help,
> Alex
>
>
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