One more Garage Door / X10 Question

["Richard S. Smith" <rss@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Everyone,

I'm pretty much aware of the basic options for monitoring the
open/closed status of a garage door in an X10 HA system.  You can
chose beetween a sensor that normally open (NO) or normally
closed (NC) and hook it up to a powerflash module.  If I use a
universal module to trigger the dry-contact switch I can detect
that event and maintain the open/closed state of the door using
whatever software I am using.

But what I'm wondering is if there's a way to get what amounts to
a powerflash module that's bi-directional (in the X10 sense of
that term) and can be queried for it's state information.  I'm
trying to avoid having to rely on software to maintain the
open/closed state information, since this can add a point of
failure to the system, for example:

- There might be a power failure, or my computer might reboot and
  lose the state table.

- If the Garage Opener has it's own RF opener, and this opener is
  used to open the door, and I use an NC sensor, this event won't
  be detected.

- Same as above, someone closes the door but the sensor is NO, no
  "close" is sent to the powerflash, no X10 event is logged.

It seems logical that someone else has tried to solve this problem
before, so I just wanted to post and see if anyone has found a
solution to this.

Thanks, as always.


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 Richard S. Smith / Email: rss@xxxxxxxxx / Web: http://www.rssnet.org/
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