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[outatime]

Hi All

X10 Newbie needs some help please

I have recently installed low voltage lighting down the side of my home which I would like to be able to control from my living room and also about to install 2 x 300w floodlights in the garden again which would be nice to control.  All these lights are on the same breaker circuit if that helps.

I am a little confused about the whole X10 what I should and shouldn't buy and I would really like to be able to remote control my low voltage and floodlights in the back garden. I was looking at some remote control recepticles which I would install in a weatherproof box and some sort of remote but like I said no idea really what I am doing with the x10 system.

Can someone please give me some sort of idea what I might need to buy to complete my mission?
Thank you

Stuart

[dave w]

outatime,

There are many ways to go with this.

Your low voltage lighting can be controlled by an Appliance Module or a Super Socket receptacle.

Your two 300W lamps are a little more complicated. I assume these are 300W halogens. Since you say you are "about to install" them, are they being controlled by wall switch(s)?

If you are controlling both lights with one wall switch, you might want to look a a Smarthome.com dimmable 1000W switch. X10 does not make a dimmable wall switch capable of handling greater than 500W.

X10 does make a non-dimming switch capable of 20A (WS13A). The WS13A switch must have a neutral wire present in the wall box ( a WS13A can also be used to control your low voltage lighting if you have the LV lighting controlled by a wall switch). The 500W dimmable wall switch (WS467 or WS12A) does not require a neutral.

In addition to the above you would want a controller to control the lights. You could use a plug-in controller such as the Mini controller, or the Mini Timer, or you could use a wireless controller such as a Palm Pad in conjunction with a tranceiver such as the TM751.

[outatime]

Thank you very much for your reply, sorry I should have been a little clearer I am still getting my head around all this X10 stuff!   Last weekend I added 120v outlets to various points in my garden with the plan of adding low voltage light and floodlighting for the Floodlighting I will be buying 2 x 300w flood lights which I will place up against two trees in my yard.

Currently as its a new installation I have no way of controlling these lights, no inside switches or anything, I was originally going to add weather proof switches in the yard for this but when I came across the X10 system I thought that this would save adding switches and I would just use a remote control for them.  I was planning on installing weather proof recepticles boxes with a X10 receipticles inside connected to the floodlights.

So would a couple of X10 recepticles, remote and TM751 work or do I need something else as well?    Also if I wanted to dim the floodlights do I need different receipticles or would a remote control include this function on it?

Thank you again

PS: Just wanted to add that my wiring in the garden is 12/2 and does have a neutral wire and is GFI protected.