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[alan]

Does anyone know how to use AHP/X10 to
automatically turn a light off some period
of time after it was turned on?

[donald mcmow]

All lights that you want to have turned off
after a specified time will have to be
activated from a macro. Set the macro to be
triggered by your remote. Put in three
steps: Turn the desired light on, Delay
(specific period), and then light off. You
can still control the light directly but if
you trigger the macro then the light will
turn on, wait (5) minutes, and then turn
off.

[roger1818]

Alan:  I have done this by putting the
macro with the delay on the same house/unit
code as the switch.  If you do this though,
the first step in the macro will have to be
to brighten the light to 100% (don’t just
turn it on, otherwise the macro will
trigger itself again creating an infinite
loop).  The reason for this extra step is
that AHP won’t transceiver an RF command if
there is a macro at that address and state
(on or off).  This is a new undocumented
feature which will speed up the processing
of macros by not having to transceive
commands needlessly.

An example of this is if you have a light
at D3 that you want to automatically turn
off after 5 minutes, create the following
macro at D3 ON:

D3 BRIGHTEN 100%
Wait 5 minutes
D3 OFF

[alan]

Both of these responses imply that you turn
on the light from a remote though, right?
What if I want them to go off even when
they are turned on by the x10 wall switch.
Turning on the switch (unfortunately) does
not actually transmit any x10 signals so
this won't work, right?

[donald mcmow]

You wpuld have to get a 2-way switch that
would send a signal to indicate change of
status. This would trigger your macro to
turn the switch off after the delay
expires. 2-way is defined as a
transmitter/receiver rather than the number
of switches in the circuit.

[alan]

That's what I thought at first, but then it
appeared that these 2-way switches are only
capable of reporting status back when
polled.  It wasn't clear whether they
transmit each time their state changes.  Do
you know for a fact that they do?  And also
when they are turned on from a slave switch
in a 3 or 4-way configuration?

[arf1410]

yes, that send out a command (ex E3 ON) when
manually turned on or off, and the slave
switch will do the same - at least
Switchlincs - can't say for certain on other
brands, but most likely are similar.