Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

There's nothing that a solder-averse individual can do with the mangled
TM751. For someone who can solder, it's possible to put a small 1:1 SMT
isolation transformer in the antenna circuit and use an efficient external
antenna. But, this isn't really worth the effort as the TM751 is not all
that good even with a better antenna.

When you have the BX24-AHT working, you can probably get rid of all of your
other transceivers. If using a CM11A with the BX24-AHT, it will stop sending
as soon as it detects a collision so, if you do retain other transceivers,
it will not add to the chaos.

You can program the BX24-AHT to respond (or ignore) the RF from the motion
detectors. With a CM11A, it's about the same speed as MS -> RR501 -> PLC.
You can also tell it to ignore some RF to avoid clogging the powerline with
superfluous traffic.

If you want better motion detection, use the X-10 security motion detector.
I've found it to be several orders of magnitude more reliable that the
EagleEye or HawkEye. I've had one for 4-5 years and am still on the initial
battery. The BX24-AHT will also report RF from the door/window switches.

One of theses days I will adapt the PIC I programmed as a generic ADC RF
input node to use the transmitter in the door/window switch. Jeff Volp
suggested doing something similar with an EagleEye or Hawkeye but I think
the door/window switches are better for this. They're about $10 each in a
3-pack.

BTW, my plans to port the AHT code to the ZX-24 are on indefinite hold. I've
come to the conclusion that the ZX-24 isn't really ready for use by anyone
other than experimenters. I'm afraid the support burden would be
overwhelming.

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
><stuff snipped>
>
>> The simplest way to speed things up is to have the RR501 turn on the light
>> and have Mr. House merely log the activity.
>
>I agree.  I suspect that Larry's put all his motion detectors on an unused
>housecode.  Lots of people do it that way but it induces delays in getting
>from detected motion to turned on light.
>
>I've found that the only way that X-10's MDs are acceptable is to have them
>directly control the load.
>
>Is there any difference in which unit gets a command on the line more
>quickly?  Or do the TM751 and the RR501 activate the light directly at
>pretty much the same instant?
>
>If you mix RR501's and TM751's together, will the RR501's always fire last
>because of the collision avoidance feature?  That seems to be the case when
>I operate both side by side on a power strip and if that's true, I can use
>that behavior to figure out whether there's a TM or an RR type transceiver
>buried in the Robodog without having to open it up and risk killing it.  Is
>there anything a DIY'er can do with some eunuch TM751's that didn't survive
>their antenna enhancement experiments?
>
>I'm about to switch over my X-10 topology from a collection of TM751's to
>your BX-AHT with a centrally located antenna and an XTB turbobooster.  It
>wasn't practical for me to use the BX-AHT before this because of all the PLC
>issues in my house.  The signal just wouldn't reach everywhere from the
>TW523.
>
>Are there any X-10 motion detectors that put detected motion directly on the
>powerline other than the floodlight module?  Naturally they'd be powered by
>line voltage.  I'm tired of chasing batteries.