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[x10javier]

Greetings to open source and x10 enthusiasts! 

A quick note for anyone wishing to use x10 home automation products under linux.  Niel Cherry, the man behind the 'linuxha' project/website , has released a book: Linux Smarthomes for Dummies .  The book covers a wide range of home automation techniques, from Wifi to open source DVRs, and has several chapters devoted to setting up and using X10 devices in linux.  The book is available at the dummies.com website under 'home and garden.'

Additionally, according to the linuxha website, both the CM15A and the CM19A are working under Linux now. 

If anyone has had a chance to check out this book, please feel free to comment here.

[BSRMAN]

My comment would be why then has he not been able to get any additional help from X10 on the CM15a source. We in the open linux world would love to have your equipment available completly to help write software for this equipment. Currently the GSPCA project is getting closer to fixing their VA11A driver for the new linux kernel.  Releasing your information to the SDK would really help us in using your equipment and would also help increase sales of the equipment to the open source community?

[x10javier]

We've been working on releasing documentation on our equipment to the Open Source community.  (One of our guys had a rather heated email exchange with Theo De Raadt, one of the founders of OpenBSD/OpenSSH about it recently, even).  I'm personally hoping we can get the info out there soon, as I'd love to be able to work with my personal X10 gear with a Linux box, instead of having to boot into Windows to use Activehome.

Unfortunately I have no estimates or ideas on when the info will be available.  I'll keep pushing from my end though, and hopefully someday soon I can build a linux-based file server, web server, DVR, and activehome controller.

[TakeTheActive]

...I'm personally hoping we can get the info out there soon, as I'd love to be able to work with my personal X10 gear with a Linux box, instead of having to boot into Windows to use Activehome.

Are you referring to ActiveHome CM11A or ActiveHome Pro CM15A?

Charles Sullivan is the Numero Uno Guru for running the CM11A under Linux:

HEYU - X10 Automation for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X

[BSRMAN]

  Thank you for the response. I sure hope this documentation release is true. And Heyu 2.0 is an example of linux in it glory when using X10 equipment. I used it for years with my cm11 flawlessly. Then I decided to try the CM15A. I have been tempted to fall back to the fail safe mode of linux  but the SPCA5xx driver began failing with the release of GCC 4.0 and the new kernel which forced me to use windows for now for my video.

[x10west]

All,

I plan to give out some Linux Systems at Xmas, and would like to include X10 Tech.

Should I stick to the older (but widely supported ) CM11A  or take a gamble with the new (CM15A) hardware?

I am torn between giving out the new spiffy stuff and just giving my older CM11 stuff away.

FWIW, closed loop would be nice...  what restrictions as to which controllers/modules I can use?

best

JWest

[Charles Sullivan]

All,

I plan to give out some Linux Systems at Xmas, and would like to include X10 Tech.

Should I stick to the older (but widely supported ) CM11A  or take a gamble with the new (CM15A) hardware?

I am torn between giving out the new spiffy stuff and just giving my older CM11 stuff away.

FWIW, closed loop would be nice...  what restrictions as to which controllers/modules I can use?

best

JWest

For Linux I would recommend Heyu (http://www.heyu.org) which operates a CM11A and/or CM17A Firecracker as having the greatest flexibility for controlling different types of modules and executing shell commands or scripts based on X10 signals.  But being the current Heyu developer/maintainer, I'm obviously biased.

Since you presumably have a working Linux system and a CM11A laying around, download and install the (free) software and check it out.  Run 'heyu help' for a quick rundown of the available Heyu commands.  Any questions you may have will be answered on the heyu_users forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heyu_users).

[neil cherry]

Hi guys, I hope to have Mr. House working by the end of this week with the CM15A. I now have the device loading and I'm able to read data from the device. I should be able to decode by Tuesday night and have it writing by Saturday.

x10javier, I'll be glad to see the documentation for this device. We've guessed our best and could only (we hope) come up with a partial decode of what it does. I know it tracks all 256 devices (if set as such), it has a bunch of macro room and it transcieves Power Line and RF.

And for those of you who are wonder, I wrote the book Linux Smart Homes For Dummies :-) Your going to need to pick up my usb cm15a device driver (I better fix that) and Misterhouse. Sorry I can't make my driver work with Windows. The MAC and BSD folks may be able to use the generic driver (does the same thing as my driver). There's also my cm15d daemon software but it's not complete (it doesn't fully decode the received X10).

[neil cherry]

OK, I'm still not done with adding the CM15A to Mr. House but I've started my own CM15A protocol document on my web page (it can be found under the Documentation link). Here's the link to my document:

http://www.linuxha.com/athome/common/cm15d/cm15a.html

So far the document has a few of the basic but it needs a lot more detail.

To the X10 folks, please don't stop with your efforts for documentation. My Documentation is guess work and has got to be missing lots of things.

--
Neil Cherry
Linux Home Automation

[BSRMAN]

So X-10,
Here we are 2007. I hope you have gone to church and confessed in your un-truths to the Linux community about the docs on the CM15a. You should be able to tell that I have used your hard-ware for many years by my handle and really don't have many problems with it. I was fortunate to be able to use HeyU for many years and SPCA5xx video for linux drivers also. So you advertised again on this new cool thing called CM15A. The hardware was the right thing. But as you know your software has a lot to be desired. Open source could really help but the longer you put us off the farther we will be from trying to help you.  I still have my CM11 and am hooking it back up to go back to my solid HeyU application and now GSPCA which has the ability to control the brightness of your video. Wow now that is cool it makes my nightwatch cam work better than on ActiveHome PRO??? An open source benifit.