Re: Water heater eating X-10 signal

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46389a3a.92032687@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >So what exactly would I be looking at on the screen if I opened up my
ESM1
> >and instead of ruining it (just a comment on my soldering skills or lack
> >thereof), I miraculously was able to solder two wires to the right PIC
pins
> >and to ground (I assume) and hook them up to a miniature (or is it
submini?)
> >stereo jack. Would that output feed directly into the AUX input of a
sound
> >card, hopefully one on a laptop?
>
> Give me a few days and I'll try to put together a web page with
> "eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows". I've
been
> really struggling lately with my spinal cord injury (I may soon need a
power
> chair - what did your dad's cost?) and need to repair/replace the network
> switch that failed yesterday before I try to tackle this. I cannot access
my
> network HDD (which is where I store pics) until that's done. Tasks which
> used to take an hour or two now take days or weeks.

Take your time.  We purchased a few different chairs from the "fell off a
truck" place.  It took me about 4 months of looking actively because we
needed to buy within 200 miles (until we bought the electric ramp van, that
is).  Street prices go from $400 up.  The best deal I got was from an
ISOLDIT that curiously made me sign a receipt that says "unit moves
smoothly."  It had sat in their store for a few weeks so I was really
curious, but it did move, so I thought I could use it for spare parts at
$135.

Of course, when I got home, it began to stutter badly.  Fortunately, someone
had installed brand new batteries (worth the purchase price all by
themselves!) and the cause was a battery wire that wasn't screwed down
tightly using lock washers.  The slightly used, heavy duty chair would have
sold for $2000+ new. Buying them new puts you in the $1600 range for the
cheapest crap Medicare will pay for and way, way up to Recarro leather seats
and full power lift and recline.  Then there's the $30K I-Bit that can climb
stairs but not fit under tables!

Sadly, there are lots and lots of chairs on Ebay that have has very little
use.  You can figure out why.  Local pawnshops and wheelchair societies also
have used ones.  Most important advice is to sit in the one you intend to
buy.  We have four because three of them turned out to be very difficult for
Dad to sit in for long periods of time because of his ruptured discs.  One
of my future projects is to mount a nice car seat from the junkyard to one
of the units with a bad chair.

> While the details may change once I get into the nitty-gritty, I will
> probably recommend just soldering a jack to the ESM1. I have some 3.5mm
M/F
> stereo extension cables that I got from All Electronics or one of the
other
> surplus dealers. I'm sure Ratshack sells something similar. I'll cut one
> asunder and solder the female end to the ESM1. There's no room to mount a
> bulkhead type jack internally but the lead can pass through the case and I
> can then design a small adapter board with voltage dividers and/or
clamping
> diodes to prevent damage to the soundcard. The male end of the cable can
> then connect the external adapter to the soundcard input. In this way, the
> ESM1 is unaltered (except for the connector dongle) when the external
> circuitry is unplugged.
>
> You need to use "line-in" although an "aux" input is probably the same
(I've
> just never seen one labelled "aux".) and I would suggest, out of an
> abundance of caution, that a separate sound card (PCI or USB) would be
safer
> than the built-in soundcard emulation of most laptops (many of which do
not
> have "line-in" but only "mic" which will not work for this.

Interesting - the laptop option would make it more portable and I am pretty
sure the one I have in mind has a LINE IN and if it fries I would be out the
$20 I paid for it at - you guessed it - "fell off a truck" Bay!  (Don't know
why I called it AUX!)

Thanks!

--
Bobby G.