Hans Otten Personal Interests

Experiments

Disclaimer

Working with 220V can be very dangerous! Do not touch wires and do not perform experiments if you do not know what you are doing. Always be very cautious.

220V to Powerflash interface

With the circuitry in the next figure you can generate X10 events via a Powerflash interface on the conditions of 220V present or not. With the appropiate transformer ofcourse also 110V can be used.

Note that the capacitor-resitor combination determine the amount of time it takes before the X10 off event is sent out. By lowering the resistor value it will become faster, but this combination gives a good compromise between time delay before the off event is ernt out and immunity for spikes and other sources of unwanted firing of the PF284.

Implemented extensions

• Dusk/dawn switch.
  Before the X10 devices were installed i was already using a cheap device that supplied 220V via a relais when it becomes dark, keeps it on for 2, 4, 6, or 8 hours or until it becomes light again. A random facility makes it less predictable. Very nice device to let the thieves believe someone is at home and, when i am at home, switch the lights on automatically.
  With the 220V to Powerflash circuitry in the figure above i have added this functionality to the X10 environment.
• PIR switch A low cost ($10) PIR device switches 220V when there is movement in front of it. With the 220V to Powerflash circuitry i have added several PIR switches to the X10 environment.

Planned experiments

I have some experiments planned to extend the X10 environment even more.

• Universal TTL module.
  Both universal module UM506 and appliance module AM486 give a switched X10 output line. Since the UM506 is expensive and has a noisy, unreliable relais i do not like it very much. Looking at the schematics of the AM486 it must be possible to take out the relais and add circuitry (optocoupler) so that an isolated (TTL) control line comes out of the device.
• Modification of minicontrollerMC460.
  Using the MC460 to the equivalent of four or even sixteen Powerflash modules. With the buttons of the minicontroller you can generate many X10 events. By adding circuitry (mini-relais or optocouplers) it must be possible to use this very cheap device as the equivalent of many expensive Powerflash modules.
  Read this nice usenet posting by Ido Bar Tana who has done this, but be aware of the risks (read this reaction by Richard Malcolm-Smith) of letting hot wires (every wire in a X10 device is potentially at 110/220V!) close to contact. I plan to use optocouplers and a little extra intelligence for a maximum number of interfaces.

If you have suggestions or have done something similar, please so that we can share the experience

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