Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems

[Marc F Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 10:47:15 GMT, nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote
in message  <4486a82e.114321468@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Larry Moss <moss@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>On 2006-06-07, Robert Green <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> May I ask you to start again from the top to explain exactly what sort
>>> of behavior you want or expect to see from your HW and SW?  I'd just
>>> like to get a resummation of the basic problem under a new thread
>>> heading so you can get the maximum number of eyes reading about your
>>> problem.
>>
>>Sure.  The basic "problem" is that when I walk into my laundry/utility
>>room with my arms full, I want the lights to turn on via motion sensors.
>>There's about a 4 second delay before the lights come on.

>The simplest way to speed things up is to have the RR501 turn on the light
>and have Mr. House merely log the activity.

If it's any consolation, the problem of accumulated delays in motion sensing
and its application to smart lighting control is not confined to X-10. Your
application is simple one, consisting in turning on a single light in
response to a single motion detector which requires minimal smarts and so
Dave's simple fix may suffice. ( Another fall-back which may be even more
dependable may be to use a switch with a built-in sensor and eschew
centralized HA altogether. )

Cyberhouse software (and ABIK, Crestron, AMX, Lutron, I think now Homeseer
and doubtless others. See eg http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6912429.html ;
http://www.patentstorm.us/class/700/277-Multiple_zones.html} has a much more
complex capability what is variously 'motion vectors' or 'lighting paths/
automated path lighting' which uses multiple motion detectors to control
multiple lights in a defined sequence and direction. This in turn places
much higher demands on the sensors, control SW and HW, and lighting system.
CyberHouse system reportedly worked fine with some combinations of hardwired
security system for the motion detectors and some hard-wired lighting
systems.

To my dismay 6-7 years ago when I first tried to implement this, Napco's
popular (among the DIY HA crowd) hard-wired security system was not 'fast
enough' owing to limitations in the speed at which sensed events are
reported over the RS-232 connection (and/or replicated on external relays).
The long-contemplated solution is to use a dedicated hard-wired controller
such as ELK M1 or homebrew PC/PIC/Atmel. In any case, X10 lighting is useful
only under very limited circumstances because of bandwidth limitations
intrinsic to the protocol - a limitation that is separate from signal
strength and reliability issues that get most of the attention.

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org