X10 and Linux

[Gerald <nothere@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Morning all.

New to this NG. Was semi-active on the X10 forums for a bit but "forums"
in general kind of annoy me. Hard to "pick up where you left off" if you
go away for a few weeks.

OK, here's what I've got going on. I'd like to be able to use one of my
Linux machines to control my X10 setup. BUT, I want to send/receive RF and
only RECEIVE PLC (to be able to see status reports from 2 way modules).

I do not want to ever send PLC signals. I have a V572AB set up along with
a phase couple in a dedicated box connected to a set of breakers directly
in my main breaker panel outside. The V572 does all of my PLC signal
sending and does it quite well. I can operate the system with a slimfire
keychain remote from well over 100' away inside the cab of my truck (not
exactly sure how far away because I can't see my house lights from further
up the road and I haven't walked it off).

A few photos of the v572 setup on the bench before install are at
http://phorce1.us/x10572/ I'll add photos of the installed setup later.

In my parts stash I have a CM11A, a couple of CM19As, and a CM15A.

It would be nice if I could use the CM19A but I know it's not well
supported yet. I have the driver which was written by Neil and hacked into
an xmms controller by Mike LeMay running -- I can issue
on/off/dim/bright commands at the command line but read what it receives
and act on it.

Niel, sorry I missed your message of November 12th to me about the CM19A
in the X10 forums. I JUST saw it as I was reviewing old stuff to write
this post.

Neil seems to be making headway with the CM15A *BUT* from what I read all
sends are going out over RF and PLC. That would cause potential double
signals for me because I use the V572 for all PLC injection.

I'd like to be able to control Ninjas at some point so it seems the CM19A
or CM15A are the only choices. I had considered a CM17A + CM11A
combination but the CM17A is send-only and doesn't control the Ninja bases.

If someone can point me to a piece of code that will read the output from
the current CM19A driver and write it to a text file I can start
documenting everything it spits out in response to the various remotes I
have (Palmpad, Scanpad, LOLA remote) and I'll buy a Ninja with the Ninja
remote and add that also. Heck, that may be all I need for now (ignoring
2-way status reports via PLC) if I can enough info to use bash and cron to
script around the responses the CM19A spits out when an RF signal is
recieved. I am not a programmer but if I can get something recognizeable on
stdout I can probably do something with it. I have a pair of CM19A units
so I can probably also get them talking to each other to find out what
they SEND in response to various commands.

I am not concerned at all about a controller having the ability to store
it's own macros. The PC will be the controller and if it's off then the
power is out and X10 is a bit useless at that point.

So, basically, any suggestions as to where I should go from here? Set up a
CM11/CM17 system for now an dwait for Neil and Woody to get further on the
CM19 and switch to CM11/CM19 when that happens? Hope for RF-only from the
CM15 and go with that when Neil has it working.

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