Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4487d620.126083359@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 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.

To the landfill they go - or maybe Ebay!

> 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.

That would be very nice.  I live in plaster and lathe - RF tends to
"stovepipe" in that it passes easily from floor to floor (wood only) but not
from room to room (the wire lathe).

> 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.

Interesting.  I will be powering it up as soon as I can find the coax
required to make the connection.  IIRC, RG59 and RG6 had the wrong
impedance.  I should be looking for 50 Ohm cable to use with the BX-AHT and
your "eggbeater" antenna design, correct?

> 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.

That's the big round sucker, right?  The Robodog comes with a similar
version but alas, it too got squirrel happy.  It might even be the reason I
got married - my then GF got such a kick out of the fact that an electric
dog would bark at real birds and squirrels.

> 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.

Why do you prefer the door/window switches?

> 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.

That's a reasonable choice.  With a viable whole house controller I can
create my own "select your own house code" option via an Ocelot translating
codes I enter and using an escape sequence so the the requirement of a more
configureable AHT has slackened somewhat.  Thanks for thinking about it,
anyway.  The discussion alone cleared up some misconceptions I had about the
way the remote actually worked.  I somehow expected it to output RF as well
as IR for every button press simultaneously.

--
Bobby G.