Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mikeuk]

Hi All. This is my first post to the forum having browsed it on and off over the last month and I was just about to take the plunge and order some x10 stuff when I suddenly came across a few posts on here that made me think again what I was just about to do and so I have a few questions.

A bit of background that may help with my questions. I live in the UK and have a detached garage which is about 20m away from the house. My primary interests to start of with is to add some security to my garage and to control a few lights/appliances in the house which I could gradually expand on in the future. My house was new build when I moved in a year ago and I have Cat5 wired into each room and also had a couple of runs ran to the garage whilst they were pulling the power underground thinking I could use it for an off-site NAS drive for backup, alarm cabling or a phone etc.

I was initially going to purchase the CM15Pro, a couple of door sensors and a Transceiver Module (TM13U) for the garage thinking that it would be to far away to reliably reach the CM15Pro, and a few modules for the house, mainly the Two Wire Micro Module with Dimmer (LW12) and some AM12U appliance modules. I then realised that the LW12s are 1-way only and that if someone were to operate the switch locally then when querying it's status, AHP or the CM15Pro would not correctly be able report it's state, so if I want to be able to do this I would require 2-way modules such as the LWM1. The problem is all of the 2-way micro modules appear to require a neutral and the common wiring practice in the UK seems to be to just have a 2 wire switched live and so I can't use these without some wiring work which I can't really justify doing.

So, am I right in what I'm saying and if so can anyone suggest an alternative or way around this that I haven't found yet?

Are 2-way dimmer modules available that do not require a neutral?

I was thinking at looking into Z-Wave but it's quite a bit more expensive, modules seem limited and doesn't seem to have as much support for tinkering, plugins and developing your own utilities which I would like to do with the X10 SDK.

Out of interest, are there any transceivers that take RF and communicate over IP rather than the powerline?

I'm open to ideas. Any help much appreciated.

Regards

Michael

[Dan Lawrence]

Just for the record, US X10 items will not work in the UK.   Try looking at www.uk-automation.co.uk/home-automation-c-140.html  That should help you.

[mikeuk]

Thanks Dan, I was aware and have been looking at a number of sites in the UK but seem to be struggling to find a 2-way dimmer module or switch that doesn't require a neutral. This really is the stumbling block for me as being able to tell if a light is on or off from some other location other than the room seems like something I would want to be able to do. If the last command sent to it from AHP was off and then someone has manually switched the light on locally, I will not know what state it's in with the 1-way module that is available and doesn't require a neutral.

I think Insteon do a 2-way module that doesn't require a neutral but they don't appear to have made it to the UK market!

I thought there may be some UK users of X10 on this forum that may have come across this issue and could recommend some products!

I might get in touch with www.uk-automation.co.uk when they open again on the 4th and see what they say.

[Dan Lawrence]

I would wait until the 4th and look at the UK site.  UK electric wiring is totally different then what we have in the US and Canada, our X10 won't work in the UK and yours won't work in the US.

[Brian H]

Welcome to the forums.
I will do some searching and see what I can find out for you.
Here we also have many wall switches with only two wires and no Neutral.

All Insteon switches use a neutral wire.
They do make a two wire kit. Where you add a fixture module to the light itself and then send power to the switch box using the original two wires and add a SwitchLinc to it. With the fixture module and SwitchLinc linked to each other.
Correct they have not done any 220 volt or 50Hz modules yet. Though there are folks asking all the time.

[Tuicemen]

I would wait until the 4th and look at the UK site.  UK electric wiring is totally different then what we have in the US and Canada, our X10 won't work in the UK and yours won't work in the US.

thats not totaly true Dan!
There are users in the UK that use some North American X10 equipment!
It is just that the two won't talk to each other. They also have to compansate for the voltage difference.
mikeuk Don't totaly give up on this forum there are user from the UK that do post to this forum someone may chime in with info your looking for!
Besides the UK site you may wish to check out the Marmitek site
There probably are many other sites in Europe as well.
 

[homeflow]

thanks for information.