Recording X-10 PLC sequences

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

This was buried in another thread so I thought it might attract more
attention in a thread all its own.

I've put together a very preliminary web page showing how I modified my ESM1
X10 Signal Meter to output signals for ZC and PLC activity which can then be
viewed on an oscilloscope and/or recorded as a .WAV file using the LINE-IN
input of a soundcard. The .WAV file can be viewed (and scrolled) in a wave
editor. I use LoopRecorder for recording and GoldWave for viewing and
editing.

The advantages are that the ESM1 is a low voltage device and is isolated
from the powerline by its 12VAC wall transformer and that the ESM1's
electronics do all the heavy lifting. All we have to do is tap into its data
stream. The disadvantages are that we cannot see anything the ESM1 cannot
see although we can see low level signals and noise which do not illuminate
any LEDs on the ESM1.

I cut about 8" off the female end of a 3.5mm M/F adapter cable like...


http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/CB-333/117/6%22#39;_3.5MM_M-F_EXTENSION_CORD_.html

I stripped about 3" of the outer insulation and soldered the leads to the
points indicated in the schematic on the web page. I can now just plug it
into my soundcard using a 3.5mm M/M cable. I will add some photos to the web
page in a few days once I get my network running again. (I lost a 7 port
switch to a power glitch a few days ago.)

The preliminary page is at...

     http://davehouston.net/ESM1-TEST.htm

CAUTIONS:

1. Do not connect to any soundcard input other than LINE-IN.

2. My ESM1 was made by Telesystems before ELK bought the rights to the
design. I do not know whether the schematic (drawn by John Galvin)
represents the current ESM1 design.

3. I don't know if there are any limits on the size of a .WAV file for
either LoopRecorder or GoldWave. All of my experiments have used 1 minute
loops recorded at 8000 samples/second. Longer recordings will be cumbersome
to view and edit even if the editor can handle the file size.