Okay, now that the MX-500 is fully loaded and working beautifully (well, I still have some receiver features to put in but they'll wait) I got to thinking that maybe now is the time to look into all this home automation stuff. The main thing I'd like to start to control are the lights in my family room. I have overhead recessed lighting controlled by two standard Home Depot dimmer switches with vertical slides and on/off switches.

Is it possible to control these and, if so, how does this work in relation to the switches on the wall??? If I dim the switches with the remote (where's the IR receiver?) how does it override the physical switch? Do I have to replace the switches?

Rich, you can easily add X10 lighting to your remote set up. You will need controller that accepts IR signals. The best (maybe only) option for that is the X10 IR543 which can be found here [Link: x10.com].

Once you have that, you can hook up to eight additional X10 switches. Dimmer switches can be purhcased here [Link: x10.com]

X10 frequently runs big sales. I would recommend buying the four pack of switches. You can easily find four things in your house you want to automate.

Once you install the switches (which is easily done), they still work manually for on and off, and the remote can also turn them on as long as you aim at the IR543. In case you can't tell, the IR543 is only about the size of a drick coaster, so it will not clutter up your home theatre.

There are several threads in this forum if you search for X10 that will help you out.

Check out this site for more advanced X10 stuff:

[Link: homeautomationnet.com]

Ah, I thought the switch itself would have the receiver in it, but I guess that doesn't exactly make sense given that they could be all over the house.

Does that mean 8 total devices or 8 light switches? I think I only care about possibly 3 or 4 lights right now.

You can add eight switches/plugs/appliances/etc.

Each switch has a "dial" on the inside of it. You will set that dial to any number between 1 and 8.

Now if you go to the transceiver (or use your remote) you can turn any of them on. If you set your overhead light to #1, anytime you hit #1 on the transceiver you will turn on your overhead light.

The IR signal from your remote will be sent to the IR543. This will turn the IR signal into a X10 signal and send it through the wires in your house until it finds #1. At this point it will turn on/off or dim that particular item.

The way the MX-500 defaults for X-10 is this.
1) Go to the X10 device menu
2) Press the number of the light you want to turn on (i.e. #1)
3) Press CHAN UP and the light turns on
4) Press CHAN DOWN and the light turns off
5) Press VOL UP and the light brightens
6) Press VOL DOWN and the light dims.

I do not use my M1-M3 Macro butons on the remote, so I set these up for my main light in my TV room.

What I do is this:

M1 - Turns light on if off (and brightens if on)
M2 - Dims light
M3 - Turns light off

This way I don't have to go through the menus just to turn the light on. Hope this helps.

If you have a remote like the Cinema 7 you can learn all 16 of the X-10 unit codes to your remote. You'll need a IR to X10 transceiver (IR543) to control the switches and modules. The switches and modules "talk" to each other over the power lines, the IR 543 converts IR from your remote to X-10 commands that it transmits at the"zero crossing point" on the AC power line.
Note that you can only control units on one House code with a standard IR543, the remote sends the unit code and command code to the IR543 and the IR543 transmits them on whatever housecode it is set to.

Or you can have all 16 codes and 16 house codes using the IR543AH, as sold at HomeAutomationNet.com.

G.

You're right Greg, but that requires learning the advanced Housecodes into the MX500. Has anyone converted them from Pronto format?

Paul,
What code are you using on your Cinema 7?
I can not get mine to work with an IR543 using code 0167
The IR543 does respond to the MX-500 but I want to be able to control an X10 unit code 11
Can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Okay, now the question is, why are standard switches sold at x-10 around $15 and switches sold at the recommended places selling for $80???

There's a few levels of X-10 stuff. The standard items are on x10.com, but the higher quality, more expensive Pro series components are on x10pro.com. Custom installers generally use the Pro stuff.

There are a lot of significant differences in the switches and dimmers some of which are:
-true rocker action
-2 wire connections which requires the x10 signal to flow through the light bulb element versus 3 wire which do not. The 3 wire work more dependably.
-cheaper dimmers have be turned to full on and then dimmed while more expensive one will turn on to what ever level you want.
There may be several other differences depending on the brand that may or may not matter in a given installation.

Dundas,
I forgot where I got this list, but here it is:

Advanced Codes for One-For-All x-10 Home Automation

CD Group

Device Code 0167

HOME AUTOMATION:

Adv. Remote
Code - Button - X10 command
------- -------- -----------
655 1 1
397 2 2
398 3 3
652 4 4
334 5 5
588 6 6
591 7 7
333 8 8
463 9 9
717 0 10
718 REWIND 11
460 PLAY 12
526 FFWD 13
268 RECORD 14
271 STOP 15
525 PAUSE 16
558 POWER All Lights On
238 MUTE All Off
303 VOL UP Bright
495 VOL DN Dim

Put code 0167 on the CD key, or re-assign the the CD key: SETUP(2 Blinks) 992 (to this key) CD CD SETUP(2 Blinks)

For unit # 11 use the REWIND key on the Cinema7

This message was edited by paulhubbard on 06/15/02 08:42.29.