🔌General Home Automation > Automated Home Showcase
Knightrider's Knightmare!!!!
Knightrider:
This will be a work in progress!!!!!! :'
Where to begin?
Let me start with the computers I have running with CM15As. There are three, two of which run AHP full time. The third one's CM15A has a bad PLC transmitter, so the primary control software on it is BXMC (Bill's X10 Manual Control) which allows for RF transmissions which are transceived by the other CM15As.
On my main HA computer, I'm running the following X10 software:
AHP - All Plug-ins
BVC,
BXMC,
Alert Dialer Plus,
X10SW,
PC Companion (Full Version)
XCL (the original not included with PC Companion)
X10WavPlayer,
X10Dispatcher,
EvilKnight Fuel Consumption Monitor (Something that Originalevil and I have been cooking up)
On my second computer (wife's machine), the following:
AHP - All Plug-ins
BVC,
X10 Dispatcher,
BXMC,
PC Companion
X10Dispatcher
On the third computer (Carillon Computer), the following:
AHP (Installed, but not running)
BVC (it's there, but not used)
X10Dispatcher
BXMC
I'll discuss how these computers interact with the system in later chapters.
Knightrider:
I know this may be a little TOO detailed ;)
One of the neater things I do with X10 is Run my HVAC system with it. I have a custom built thermostat based around a velleman k6002 mashed with the k6003 kit. The thermostat is mounted to the wall in the Living Room on which the other side is the back wall to the Master Bed Room Closet. I opened up the wall in the closet and mounted outlets INSIDE the wall backed up to the stud. There are 4 PowerFlash units in these outlets connected to the Thermostat.
I heat my house in three ways.
Primarily, I built an outdoor wood boiler (actually in my detached shop/garage/barn). This pumps hot water to the house through 1 1/2 inch piping to which I have a manifold in the basement with 5 - 1 inch outputs. There is a master circulation pump in the garage which moves water back and forth, and 5 pumps in the basement which supply hot water to different zones in the house. The manifold in the basement also has a bypass which runs to the water heater supply side to prevent the master circulator pump from over-pressuring in case all 5 zone pumps are off.
The 5 zones are as follows:
Zone 1: Plenum on top of furnace. Like a radiator in the duct work. Furnace fan blows air through it. Supply pump connected to Appliance Module on H 12
Zone 2 : Radiant floor heat in the Living Room and Kitchen. The pump to supply this one is connected to an Appliance Module on H 11
Zone 3 : Radiant floor heat to the Bedroom and Bathroom. The pump to this supply is connected to an Appliance Module on H 10
Zone 4: Radiant floor heat to the Upstairs Bedrooms. The pump to this supply is connected to an Appliance Module on H 9
Zone 5: Radiant floor heat to the Upstairs Common Room and Bathroom. The Pump to this supply is connected to an Appliance Module on H 8
Secondarily, I still have my oil fired furnace in the basement. The thermostat connections have been removed and replaced with an UM506 on H16.
The fan output from the furnace control has a 120v relay attached to it. (when the furnace calls for the fan to come on, it activates the relay) Zone 1 will also activate a relay wired in parallel to it. This allows both Zone 1 and the furnace to use the fan.
As a final reserve, I have electric baseboard heat in the Downstairs Bathroom, Living Room, Upstairs and the Master Bedroom. These are run by Heavy Duty Appliance modules on H1, H2, H3, and H4 respectively.
My primary thermostat runs as follows: At 68 degrees, Zone two is called from a powerflash. If the radiant heat is not enough, at 65 degrees, Zone 1 is called from a powerflash. At 63 degrees, a powerflash calls for the furnace.
The bedroom and two upstairs zones have simple thermostats attached to powerflash units.
Any zone call will active the circulator pump. It also cycles twice per hour to keep the water in the lines warm by a timer in AHP.
The master circulator pump for the wood fired system (in the garage) is on a RR501 on channel H13. In the event that the wood burner hasn't been called for, the pump is activated by a temperature based macro from PC Companion when it's determined to be below 15 degrees outside. This keeps the pump and pipes from freezing. PC Companion samples temperature data from the internet once per hour.
I have a reed switch attached to the level float on my oil tank. It connects to a powerflash on M15. When the fuel gets low, AHP sends me an email, shuts the furnace down after a minute and activates the electric heat. (House Code "M" is monitored on one of my systems) It also activates a .bat file created by X10wavplayer which tells me that we are out of fuel oil and that the emergency electric heat is engaged. This happens on two computers.
X10Dispatcher has listeners set up to tell me when the furnace runs (lets me know that the wood boiler isn't hot enough) between 5:30 am and 11 pm.
In the summertime, I use a combination of window fans and window mounted air conditioners. They all are actived by X10. The air conditioners are called from the thermostat with a little reconfiguation.
Coming up next......X10 around the yard.
Knightrider:
I have a waterfall out back which runs on an AHP timer. It runs from 5 till midnight on week days, and 5 am till midnight on week-ends. The timer has a date code range of April through October.
I also have a pool out back. I shut my pool pump down from 5 till midnight via AHP timers. AHP will allow me to over-ride the timer if I need extra filter time or I'm not out there. Several years ago, I found a hack using a pressure switch attached to the filter's piping. This is attached to a powerflash on O14 which tells me that the filter needs backwashing. The alert is sent to my email and is announced by X10dispatcher.
I have yet to put in a permanent pool light, but I do have a "mount over the edge" model on x10.
Our pool tends to lose water in the summer due to evaporation. To fix this, I modified a washing machine fill valve in the basement to feed a pipe that runs to my skimmer. "O13" runs for 10 minutes at 6pm on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from May 30th to September 2.
I like to garden alot, so I have floodlights set up on x10 around the garden.
We also have a horse shoe court, which is lit by an x10 floodlight. We also use the floodlight to alert us when someone's out in the yard via a chime played through X10Dispatcher on the Carillon computer.
Carillon computer?
We live in a very rural area, and I have two PA Horns mounted to the back side of the house. The Audio is feed to them via my "Carillon Computer". I have a program called "Computer Alarm Clock". It plays the Westminster chimes on the hour (with time marks). This computer will also play different tones (low volume) to alert us when someone comes to call. The neighbors have yet to complain about this system and have come to expect the chimes. On the week-ends, we also play carillon chimes (hymns) and different times. We change the music with the liturgical seasons. The approximate range on the sound is a reported 5 miles on a clear day, but I have yet to confirm this.
The computer can also feed music to the back yard (again at low volumes) for our personal enjoyment.
Now comes a neat feature on this system....
Ramsey Electronics sells a cheap little "Cue Siren" kit for about 10 bucks. They also sell single stage tone decoders for about the same price.
In bad weather, our county dispatch "tones" out the storm sirens over the fire ground frequency. While that's nice for the county seat, it doesn't help us out in county. I have a combination tone decoder hooked up to a scanner that picks up the correct frequency. When all tone channels are open, a powerflash (P5) is triggered which trips a UM506 attached to the siren. The system is deactivated in a similar fashion when P6 is tripped, which triggers a macro to shut down P5.
I actually had a neighbor comment that he was outside of his house at 2 AM one morning and heard the siren, which caused him to go inside and turn on the TV to find out that we had a tornado warning in the area!
I doubt that any of the above is legal in any way, but sometimes safety is paramount. The same siren can also be triggered by the local volunteer fire department via the MSN messenger remote option on dispatcher or logmein. My son is a relatively new member to the FD, and spends several nights over there.
We have a Pepsi machine that we purchased a few years back from ebay. I removed the coin machine from it and wired up the buttons direct (free soda). The solenoids to dispense the product are 120V AC. Four of the six slots are hooked to an appliance module set to P11. This allows me to control the kid's pop consumption. (They'll drain 144 cans in a day if you let them) I have also reserved two slots for a beverage of an adult nature. They're hooked to they're own appliance module on P12.
I noticed that the machine tends to freeze up in the summer and needs to defrost every other night. That was the genesis of the P16 Master control of the machine. Since P16 is transmitted every time x10nets fires up, I'm assured that the machine never stays off for an extended period of time.
While I was adding x10 to the pop machine, I decided to pull the florescent light from the unit and replace it with three colored incandescents. The machine now runs either red, white or blue, depending on the time of night. This accounts for P13, P14 and P15 respectively.
We purchased a Pepsi sign from Ebay with the caption "Pool" in the lower panel. This too is modified like the sign on the machine. It hangs from a tree out by our pool.
I have various landscaping lighting "scenes" set up on HC "L". the lighting includes spotlights on trees, ground lighting and some decorative stuff.
I also have a mercury vapor "security" light mounted in a tree by the pool. This is controlled by "O4" for when we do not want the light running. For the most part, it runs "Dusk to Dawn" on an AHP timer as well as its own CDS cell.
I have X10 lighting in my outhouse as well and at one time even ran the septic tank aerator motor.
Coming up Next........ "Home Mechanical Systems"
Knightrider:
Some of the information overlaps here, so be patient.
I was raised in a different time and place. I regard the telephone as an important tool, not an extension of one's ear like so many kids do these days. I have a strict rule that says no phone calls after 9 pm (drives the kids nuts). To enforce it, all the phones in the house (with the exception of two right now) are switched off at 9 and re-activated at 5 am. This is simply accomplished by placing a UM506 across the "TIP" portion of the line. I wouldn't recommend killing all phones in the house in case of emergencies. X10 Dispatcher announces the "house phones deactivated" and "house phones activated".
While I'm on the subject, you can read more on that here :
http://forums.x10.com/index.php?topic=17225.0
And that will detail House Code "E" and the smoke alarms.
P2 and P3 are Macros that announce When the washer and dryer are finished with their cycles, respectively.
I have read about induction coils being used to detect current draw on the appliances to create the interface, but my solution is a little more dirty. I'm lucky enough to have both a washer and dryer with buzzers on them to announce the end of the cycles. I attached relays to the buzzers to provide contact closures for two powerflashes. The macros Open up computer 1's input to my central house amplifier (Chapter on home audio later). The macros also open up the amplifier's output to the various audio zones in the house. This delays for one minute and then closes the inputs/outputs. X10 Dispatcher announces that either the washer or dryer is finished. There were some timing issues here, so the audio files were adjusted accordingly. This system works well unless you are trying to listen to audio somewhere in the house. Then you have to re-open the channel you were listening to. I'll get this fixed (somehow) in the future.
P4 and I1 are powerflashes attached to my existing wired doorbell system, P4 the front I1 the back.
The doorbell chime was mounted in a back hall way and could not be heard throughout the house. Dispatcher handles the audio chimes for the doorbells on local machines.
I also use the doorbells to log video from visitors. This is a "Just in case" type thing. (no one around here rings the bell, they just walk in)
Here's the macro for the back door:
Macro name : Back Doorbell Back Doorbell 1A
Condition : "It's nighttime" <none>
Sequence: Bedroom light on Select Cam "back door"
Kitchen West ON Video Recording "Start"
Driveway Light 40% Delay "3:00"
Back Door Light ON Video Recording "Stop"
Select Cam "back door"
Video Recording "Start"
Delay "3:00"
Video Recording "Stop"
P9 and P10 are labeled as chime modules, indoor and outdoor respectively. They are there in name only. These units are actually represented in X10 Dispatcher on respective computers according to the computers outputs. P9 is a wav file from the Dispatcher Sound Pack of the "Jetsons" doorbell. P10 is a wav of the Star Trek TNG doorchime. These chimes are triggered by respective motion sensors around the house and a laser trip sensor on the driveway (ramsey electronics) attached to a powerflash.
B9 controls the fireplace. This is done with a UM506 inline with the manual control. The unit is inline (series) with the wall switch control to prevent accidental fireplace ignition. It's very cool to tell BVC to "Light my fire" and she/he does. This control can be very easily adapted to electric fireplaces as well using an appliance module.
Thus ends the chapter on home mechanical systems.
Coming up Next........ X10 in the Garage
Knightrider:
Ok, at this point I should really be in bed, but I'm on a roll.
The garage is easy. Aside from all my interior lighting (G3, G4, G5, G6, and G8), and my exterior lighting (G1, G2), I have an exhaust fan wired up (G7) and my air compressor (G16).
The air compressor is a small 3 horse portable model hooked to a piping system with a check valve on it (so I can remove the compressor) attached to a 60 gallon storage tank. I only mention this now because some of my future x10 plans include pneumatics.
I do have a computer out in the garage, but no x10 interface. The garage (was a carriage house at one time) is detached and about 30 feet away from the house. Again, I have no problems passing the x10 signal out there.
As previously mentioned, the woodboiler is out there with a rr501 hooked to the master circulator pump.
I have a Radio Shack mini controller out on my workbench, as well as a palmpad.
There is a wired camera which views the interior of the main section of the shop as well as a camera mounted to the front of the shop. (more on cameras in a later chapter)
Up Next............Home Audio with X10
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