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Topic:
X-10 integration with Harmony. What to choose?
This thread has 20 replies. Displaying posts 1 through 15.
Post 1 made on Friday February 17, 2006 at 14:46
accuteklab
Long Time Member
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12
I just installed 12 or so X-10 dimmers in my home and plan to change all other switches for complete automation (10 more). I want to be able to control them using the same remote as for my video/audio set up. My set up consist of 2 DVD players, dish box, yamaha receiver and Philips plasma TV. I cannot decide on what to get for best results. Many people recommend Harmony 880 or 890 but they can only control up to 15 devices and their interface with X-10 is not clear for me. This mean that I can only control 11 of my switches and 4 audio/video devices and will not able to add anything more. Does each X-10 switch consider to be a device or all my 12 switches can be set as part of one devise. I also purchased X10 IR/RF mini controller IR 543 because I was told neither one of remotes (Harmony, MX-3000 or Pronto) can directly control X10 switches. I want to be able to make settings on remote and change the whole audio/video/lighting scene with the touch of the button. X-10 switches that I have are standard X10 switches with no memory so they should receive dimmer setting every time from the remote ‘cause they do not have memory for scenes. I research as much as I could – called each of those 3 manufactures and still cannot come to the final conclusion what to choose Harmony880, or 890, Pronto 7000, MX-3000 or anything else. Price is also a factor. Please help! Thanks in advance for everybody input.
Alex
Post 2 made on Friday February 17, 2006 at 16:35
akirby
Super Member
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March 2004
4,640
The IR543 will count as only one device, so no problems there.
Post 3 made on Monday February 20, 2006 at 14:54
tkrug
Long Time Member
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435
First of all, on the Harmony remotes X-10 IR543 is considered as one single device regardless of what is connected to them (as akirby said). There are two problems you will run into.

One is that the IR543 can only operate the "A" commands. I think you would be better off getting the IR543AH which allows you to control devices within all of the 'letters'. That way you can setup every room under a different 'letter' and control them independently. A in your theater, B in your living room, c in the bedroom, d in the kitchen, etc. Otherwise, you may be limited by the number of devices that can be controlled by the X10 controller (20 per letter). Plus, if you have a different letter for each room you can utilize the ALL OFF command to shut off all of the lights, switches and outlets in that part of the house. If you are stuck with only A commands you will have to independently turn off each cluster of lights one at a time.

The other problem with harmony remotes is that you cannot setup true macros. Everything is activity based and activities cannot be run independently of whatever else you are doing. In other words, you couldn't run a "turn on kitchen lights" activity while watching TV because the remote would then power off the TV activitiy devices and then turn on the kitchen lights. And controlling the devices manually is a pain since each X10 command is really made up of 3 individual command and this is not ideal for X10 usage (you have to select the device code 'A', then the device number '4', then the command to send "off"). It works for me because I only use X10 in my theater and I can setup the lighting to come on as part of the startup activity. But in order to control lights independently it requires pressing a series of buttons. Not exactly ideal for whole house control.

You would be much better off with a remote that allows you to program your own macros, or a second remote that would be used for lighting.

-Tim

Pronto Neo FAQ: [Link: remotecentral.com]
Post 4 made on Monday February 20, 2006 at 15:25
mpsan
Founding Member
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72
Well, almost. An IR543 will let you select one housecode...not just "A". Also, each housecode can have up to 16 devices. It is a 16x16 setup (256 units...FF in hex).

A-P housecodes and 1-16 device codes = 256.
OP | Post 5 made on Monday February 20, 2006 at 16:43
accuteklab
Long Time Member
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12
Thank you for your input. Can I program Harmony to switch all lights( as a zero starting point to avoid problem that you desribed) and then turn continue with macro to keep them at the certain level. Can I program Harmony or any other remotes to dim lights at, for example, 40% when I pressed specific button(for example pause on remote) or not? Am I on the right track or totally off the wall. To be new in it I'm really confused. Thanks again for all your time. Will be waiting for your reply.
Post 6 made on Tuesday February 21, 2006 at 00:55
tkrug
Long Time Member
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435
The standard X10 dimmers don't do scene lighting. You have to buy dimmers that can handle scenes as that is not really "up to" the remote. Any remote can control "scene capable" dimmers as you describe it. Basically you preprogram the dimmer to a certain setting and when you turn the light on it automatically goes to that level.

As I said, Harmony remotes aren't ideal for X10 because you have limited control and setup. The only way a Harmony remote can work with X10 is if the lighting commands you want to send are a part of another activity. (ie if you want certain lights to come on with your TV, or certain lights to come on with your Stereo - but if you want to be able to control lights in other parts of the house as well this is not the remote for you.) Almost any other programmable remote that does macros will work.
-Tim

Pronto Neo FAQ: [Link: remotecentral.com]
Post 7 made on Wednesday February 22, 2006 at 10:24
gspencer
Long Time Member
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August 2004
31
Well, 2 things: 1--you need scene capable dimmers. 2--my Harmony 520 works great with the scenes I've set up. But no remote of any kind is efficient for controlling 10 different switches individually. But 2 clicks of my remote put me into movie lighting mode (from my watch dvd activity), 2 more clicks turn on the bathroom light, and 2 more clicks do a 3 minute slow resume of lights after the movie is over. My recommendation is to not try to have your remote do too much. But really consider switching to scene capable lighting... it will allow you to do what you want to.
Post 8 made on Wednesday February 22, 2006 at 11:36
tkrug
Long Time Member
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435
gspencer,
the problem is that it seems he wants to control lighting in other parts of his house unrelated to his theater. He will run into problems with Harmony's activity based setup b/c you can not run one activity while another is taking place. Anything more than turning one light on or another light off will require either alot of buttons added to the lcd screen, entering device mode or setting up an activity...and that is where the limitation of the Harmony will come in. As I said, Harmony is great if the lighting is just part of your theater and part of theater related activities...but once you try to control the rest of your house you will get stuck because you can't run the "lighting" activity while in DVD activity.
-Tim

Pronto Neo FAQ: [Link: remotecentral.com]
Post 9 made on Wednesday February 22, 2006 at 14:23
gspencer
Long Time Member
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August 2004
31
I see what you're saying, Tim. I agree with you. I think he needs this:

[Link: smarthome.com]

sitting next to his chair if he wants that kind of flexibility.

(no, I'm not affiliated with their company--just bought their stuff for my basement)
Post 10 made on Thursday February 23, 2006 at 12:12
ELA
Long Time Member
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Posts:
December 2005
238
Assuming you want to control your lights with your IR remote and use dimmers with scene capability:
You can leave one activity, say "watch DVD", and enter another activity say "control lights" and do all you want to quite well from the remote. After you are done with the control lights activity you simply return to the watch DVD activity.
When you set up the control lights activity you tell it you do not want to turn off unused devices. I use this method just fine.

Regards,
Ela
Ela
Post 11 made on Wednesday March 8, 2006 at 21:55
edykes
Lurking Member
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March 2006
1
I have been fighting with this issue with my Harmony 880. Based on Harmony restrictions, I am thinking about setting each light to a different letter, with the same number (i.e Kitchen A3, Den B3, Livingroom C3), and then I can change the labels on the Harmony such that House Code A is Kitchen and House Code B is Den. I will then have to know to press "3" & "On" to turn on any of the devices. This sounds like a pain, but I can't think of any better ways. Note that I do not want to use macros, as I want all the lights to be in the same Device.

My question - does anyone know a better way (i.e. am I making this too complicated)?
Post 12 made on Thursday March 9, 2006 at 08:24
gspencer
Long Time Member
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August 2004
31
If you're using the IR-543 receiver, you set it to one house code and leave it. I've set mine to "M", and set up scenes m1, m2, etc. Each light is individually assigned a diff house code (pool room is p1 through p4). But when I set up scenes, I named them M1, M2, etc. Make sense? It works well for me, but I'm no expert.
Post 13 made on Sunday March 12, 2006 at 18:54
JBarrie
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accuteklab: Sorry, I just noticed your post from February, so I hope the follow ideas aren't too late for you. I've been using X-10 heavily for 20 years now. If you're really big into scenarios, you need custom equipment/controllers (as suggested above). However, I'm satisfied with my Harmony 880.

In IR control, I'm using a couple of different "Lighting" activities to switch on lights in my house. With my older X-10 adaptors, there are no pre-programmed codes for certain lighting levels. As a result, you need to send a significant number of "dim"s etc. to achieve what you want. I use the **activity-entering** feature of the Harmony to send out all kinds of commands to the different lights I want on. I have an activity called Lights-Dim, and another called Lights-All.

I unwittingly exceeded the Harmony maximum. Lighting my family room for a movie-theater scenario with 30-odd commands works fine. "Lighting-All" for the whole house was interesting. Consistently, it gets through 40-45 of the 60 commands, and stops. Always at exactly the same place.

Obviously I've hit a limit here. The Harmony tech support went to third tier to get the limitation. You may be entertained to know that the Harmony position is that their web site will support a limit of 6 activity-entering commands. Anything beyond that is gravy.

If you haven't already done so, take a look at the AVSforum for the many contributions on the use of Harmony with X-10.
D'ye ken John Peel?
Post 14 made on Sunday January 7, 2007 at 18:28
mvgossman
Lurking Member
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January 2007
3
On February 20, 2006 at 14:54, tkrug said...
The other problem with harmony remotes is that you cannot
setup true macros. Everything is activity based and activities
cannot be run independently of whatever else you are doing.
In other words, you couldn't run a "turn on kitchen lights"
activity while watching TV because the remote would then
power off the TV activitiy devices and then turn on the
kitchen lights.

True but even from an activity, you can press "Device" and select the 543 device to adjust lighting. It would be nice if there were a true macro mode, though, so you could press "Device" then "Watch movie". Perhaps a future upgrade will permit that or perhaps if I look further into the remote there is a way. In the meantime, you can at least set up the 543 as a Device, and when you enter "Movie" activity for instance, it will automatically turn off the lights.
MVG
Post 15 made on Monday January 8, 2007 at 00:48
DBrown
Founding Member
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February 2002
1,049
With my 880, I can be in any activity, select a device (such as the X10 controller) and spend as much time there as I want. When I want to return to my still-active activity I press the activity button TWICE.

In my X10 (IR543) device mapped the lights 1 through 10 to the number buttons (0 being 10), then 11 through 16 to the transport keys not including REC or STOP. I put ON and OFF on the UP and DOWN buttons, DIM and BRIGHT on the volume+ and volume- buttons. For specific room lights that I want to name, I add them to the LCD display buttons. You've got room for 8 on a page, so it takes only two pages to list 16 named module numbers, in any order you want them.

I have X10 lights AND X10 cameras so I made two devices. In my Cameras device use the same IR543, but only device codes 12 through 16. Cameras obviously don't dim, so the only mapping I did in that device was to the LCD screen and the UP/DOWN buttons. My cameras are named on the screen so all I have to do is pick one then hit the UP button to have it's video signal appear in the PIP window of my TV. PIP buttons from the TV were also "learned" to the camera device so I could control the PIP position and size while in that device.
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