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X10 is a method for transmitting commands over household power lines. The typical use of X10 is to send commands to Lamp Modules or Appliance Modules to switch power on or off, or dim (in the case of lamps) electrical loads.
This is a suite of programs that implement the ability to send and receive X10 commands with a computer. There are three components:
Clients send and receive commands via UDP/IP. Some clients are designed to give the user an interface to X10 (gtk-x10, x10c). Other clients implement automated functions (w800rf32).
The server passes X10 commands between the clients (via UDP/IP) and the X10 interface. Currently, there are 3 servers:
x10d-1132s: designed to operate with Smarthome's 1132s X10 computer interface module
x10d-loopback: a dummy server for testing that doesn't actually talk X10.
x10d-br: bottlerocket server, for use with the X10 FireCracker. The FireCracker talks X10 wireless, which makes it not exactly an X10 transmitter directly, but it is possible to use it anyway.
The X10 interface is a piece of hardware that connects the computer to the power line and implements actual sending and receiving of X10 commands.
Currently the best supported interface is Smarthome's 1132 device that talks to the computer on a serial port.
This interface is a good choice because it has the following features:
It is able to both send and receive X10 commands
It supports arbitrary X10 commands including extended data
Easy to install
The X10 Firecracker (aka bottlerocket) is also supported but its usefulness is severely limited as a general purpose X10 computer interface:
It talks wireless X10, not real PLC X10. Not all commands that you can send via X10 can be sent via the FireCracker (or any wireless X10 device).
It is wireless. Wireless is practical and it can make the Firecracker very useful on a laptop, but for a computer that is installed in a fixed location, why use wireless if you can just wire to a [very] nearby electrical outlet?
It supports only sending X10 commands, not receiving.
After compiling the code, you can get started right away with:
x10d-1132s file:/dev/term/a gtk-x10 localhost:12010
Substitute your serial port for /dev/term/a
If you don't have a working X10 interface module but want to try the software anyway, try:
x10d-loopback gtk-x10 localhost:12010
SECURITY WARNING: The server doesn't implement any authentication or access controls. (I run the server behind a firewall, and everything behind my firewall is allowed to talk to the X10 server by choice).
make install
manpage for w800rf32
document how to add applets to gtk-x10?
gtk-x10 is a graphical user interface and is the flagship client.
It has applets for:
Sending raw X10 commands and watching X10 commands received
Sending casual X10 commands from a small window you can keep always open in the corner or your screen.
Programming scenes
Programming default unit configuration
Scenes are virtual X10 addresses that can be programmed to activate preset settings on many different X10 units at once. See the manpage and Smarthome's documentation for details.
Small client written in Perl that can be used to send x10 commands from the command line. Also useful to watch X10 commands received in a terminal or send them to a log file ("x10c monitor")
This is the best client to look at as an example for writing new ones.
Perl implementation of gtk-x10's tiny-window applet. This client is superceded by gtk-x10's functionality.
To make gtk-x10 behave similarly, run:
gtk-x10 server:port tiny=forcemap,nodeco,-162,0
The most popular receiver for X10 wireless commands is an appliance module with a built in wireless receiver sold by X10. This receiver is convenient because it is a standalone unit that converts X10 wireless directly into X10 PLC, convenient for applications where a computer is not available, but it has the following problems:
Limited range. The standard 18 button X10 remote control does not work much more than 10 to 15 metres away, and the keychain remotes hardly work 5 metres away.
Need one of these modules for each housecode in use by wireless remotes.
The appliance module steals one of the unit codes for itself. Some models do not respond the X10 PLC commands sent to this address!
If you want to implement some intelligent processing on a computer, there is a costly X10 PLC delay if you are translating wireless to PLC and then to a computer using an X10 PLC receiver on the computer.
The W800RF32 by WGL Designs is an excellent X10 wireless receiver which solves all of the above problems.
The w800rf32 program listens for commands sent by the W800RF32 via a serial port, decodes them, and sends them to a Perl script for processing. The Perl script, w800rf32_action, supports sending the commands received to x10d directly, or it can do the following translation first:
The most popular model X10 wireless remote control that has 18 buttons (8 to turn units on, 8 to turn units off, plus a dim button and a bright button). This remote supports only turning units on or off and then dimming or brightening them. It lacks the ability to dim or brighten a unit without turning it on or off first.
I wanted to make something more powerful possible with this remote control. w800rf32_action implements that. It does so at the expense of simplicity though (you generally have to press two buttons instead of one to get something done).
With w800rf32_action, the remote control works like this: The lefthand side of the remote control (the 8 buttons labelled on) select an available unit from 1 to 8. The righthand side of the remote control (the 8 buttons labelled off) set the currently selected unit to various brightness levels. The first button on top is off (0%) and the last button on the bottom is 100% (full on). You can also press DIM (directly below the button for full intensity) to send an On command for the currently selected unit. Use this to turn on a unit to its default brightness level or to turn on any unit that doesn't support preset dim commands.
As an additional feature, w800rf32_action supports multiple banks of 8 units each. When you switch to a different bank, the meaning of units 1 to 8 changes. To change banks, press one of the buttons in the left column (the On column) and then press BRIGHT. This will select the bank number corresponding to the unit number pressed just before BRIGHT, and leave unit 1 selected in the new bank.
Commands are send to the server in ASCII in the payload of UDP datagrams. The server will respond to each command sent. Multiple command can be sent in a single UDP datagram by seperating them with CRNL. In this case the server will send back a response to each command, seperated by CRNLs.
| x10-command hello | This is a ping command. The server will respond with x10-hello |
| x10-command preset n | Issue a preset dim command to level n (range: 0..31) |
| x10-command house unit | Issue the X10 command house unit |
| x10-command house function | Issue the X10 command house function |
| x10-command house unit function | Shorthand to issue both a unit X10 command and a function X10 command |
| x10-command query | Request to report the current status of each unit. The server will respond with x10-status |
| x10-command monitor | Request that the server copy all transmissions received to this client. This command should be sent approximately every two minutes to make sure the server keeps sending transmissions. |
| x10-hello | sent in response to x10-command hello |
| x10-ok | command acknowledged |
| x10-syntax-error | command not understood |
| x10-monitor-ok | command acknowledged, will begin echoing X10 messages received |
| x10-received | A copy of an X10 transmission received. Sent by the server to clients that have requested monitoring. |
| x10-state | Sent by the server to clients that have requested monitoring to indicate that the server's idea of the current state of a unit has changed. The state is represented as a single ASCII character: 0% 100% 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv 0 means that the unit is off, v means that the unit is at full intensity (preset 31 or 100%), characters in between are the other preset levels. ? means unknown (the server was started too recently for it to aquire any information of the status of the unit). = means on, but the server doesn't know what the unit's default on level is so it is unable to report an actual preset level - means that the unit was on and that there have been subsequent dim or bright commands, so the current brightness level could be different from the unit's default on level or could even be off (if it was dimmed all the way down) |
| x10-status | Sent in response to x10-command query, the server reports 256 status characters, one for each unit in each house code. Each character is as in x10-state |
| x10-end | Server response appendedto the end of every packet sent in response to commands. |