kcshipley

Michel - Does using a lamp dimmer REALLY save energy? My sister asked me this some time back, and I wasn't sure that it does. As I understand, the old-style rheostat dimmers merely dissipated the "extra" power through heat in a variable resistive load, in order to provide less "go juice" to a lamp. Perhaps this is different for the modern digital "choppers"? Is this done via Pulse Width Modulation?

FrankF - The new Beta solved the problem for me.

Michel - Apparently so.

If Control 'RemoteLinc button6' is switched Off Then Send Notification to All Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ------------------------------------------------------------- 2/6/2008 04:18:40: At My Lighting: In the RemoteLinc button6,Off has changed to 0. *** Service Machine. DO NOT REPLY ***

Hi Michel - I'm having a great time playing with all my X-10 motion sensors! The only time notification works for me is if I manually run a program with "notify" in it, from the Program Summary. See my "X-10 Motion Sensors Watchdog" programs I just posted in "ISY Example Programs"...

MikeB - I do my all-off buttons with a combination of scenes and programs, because: 1) I have X-10 things to turn off, which you can't do in a scene 2) I have stairwell lamps I want to turn ON (for a few minutes) when I hit the all-off buttons. That way I can find my way upstairs to go to bed, or find my way out of the house from upstairs. Further, I have found that "Nighttime" and "Nighttime late" folder conditions (split at 10:30 pm) make programming different behaviors much easier. For instance, the outside floodlight turns on at sunset and off at 10:30 (nighttime), and after that, until dawn, just turns on for 3 minutes when a motion sensor (X-10) fires. Also, I have a "Timeouts" folder with no conditions, for anything that turns on for just a short while. These are all based upon "Last Run Time" for whatever program, which could be conditional. In other words, I don't keep the timeouts in the same folder as the programs that fired them, because 3 minutes later, those conditions may no longer be true! That way motion sensors can randomly fire, say, within a timeframe such as "Nighttime late" and the timeout (say 3 minutes and PAST the timeframe) is unconditional. I've had this happen before I organized in this way and the timeouts don't happen if it's no longer Nighttime late!

I live in an earth house, with no windows downstairs except for the "front door" in the back yard So there is no view of visitors coming in from the driveway out front. So I bought 4 X-10 motion sensors, for the driveway, the sidewalk, the patio and just above the "front door". The program below doesn't have a "visitors4?" for the front door yet - I haven't installed that, facing straight down. With just the other 3 sensors, I occasionally get misfires when schoolkids cut through the back yard on their way to the bus stop, or the lawn care guy drives the lawnmower through, or the neighbor short-cuts to the cul-de-sac mailbox. An 8-button KPL in a tabletop enclosure, linked to the X-10 motion sensors has been really nice for "seeing" what's going on outside. The "Visitors buttons group" is a scene with KPL buttons (responders - indicators) all over the house, that flash when a visitor arrives, then stays on for a few minutes. In the Home Theater with the 8 speakers blasting, I originally had a "blink the ceiling lights" program, augmenting the X-10 chime. I might put that back in eventually... Notice that this is what Electrical Engineers call a "State Machine", where specified things must happen in the proper sequence (and in this case, within a certain timeframe) in order to get to the final "state", which rings the doorbell. This (uh...) filters out such occurrences as large dogs and neighborhood kids scampering about, every-which way near the motion sensors, and visitors LEAVING. ------------------------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Visitors1?' If X10 'A15/On (3)' is Received Then - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Driveway motion sensor ----------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Visitors2?' If Program 'Visitors1?' is True And From Last Run Time for 'Visitors1?' For 30 seconds And X10 'A13/On (3)' is Received Then - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Sidewalk motion sensor AFTER driveway motion ----------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Visitors3?' If Program 'Visitors2?' is True And From Last Run Time for 'Visitors2?' For 10 seconds And X10 'A11/On (3)' is Received Then Run program 'Visitors' Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Patio motion sensor AFTER (driveway, then sidewalk motion) ----------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Visitors' If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Send X10 'B7/On (3)' //ring chime Repeat 15 times Set Scene 'Visitors buttons group' Fast Off Set Scene 'Visitors buttons group' Fast On Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Visitors timeout' If Time is Last Run Time for 'Visitors' + 3 minutes Then Set Scene 'Visitors buttons group' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Here's a neat trick I stumbled upon recently: My Kitchen has a small eating bar, and a computer desk nearby. So there is a large fluorescent light in the ceiling and a desk lamp, very close together. I rarely use both at the same time. I created a scene with the fluorescent (ApplianceLinc) and desk lamp (LampLinc) and a KPL button (controller) in it. The "On level" for the Applinc is ON, and for the LampLinc, OFF. Now I can TAP the KPL button to turn on the fluorescent light, or HOLD it to turn on the desk lamp - the Applinc doesn't respond to brightness levels!

Chris - I haven't been able to get the "notify" function to work, except from within the Program Summary tab. It won't work from within a program otherwise. Configuration is simple email. When it does "work", I get some cryptic text that means nothing. Is there a way to say "Your motion sensor batteries are dead!"? What would really be neat is for "notify" to send the text in the comment for the program that uses it.

I have nearly identical programs for "All off downstairs" and "All off upstairs". And then a sunrise program uses both of these to turn everything off once a day. This helps get all units in sync occasionally. Also, I found it nice to add "stairwell on for 10 minutes" to both of the All off programs, so that they can serve both as "leaving the house", or "night-night", from either up or downstairs.

These programs monitor EagleEye MS14A motion sensors and scream if any of the batteries go dead. It is assumed that at the time 'Setup' is run, nearby lights are off (which is assured in an 'All off' program triggered by Last Run Time for 'Setup'). 'Notify' rings an X-10 buzzer and supposedly sends email. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get the email "notify" function to work... I originally ran these programs at night within a 10 second timeframe, forcing lights on/off and monitoring the "darkness" signal from the motion sensors. But I later decided that if the light bulbs were dead, the motion sensors would be blamed for it, so I let Mama Nature handle the lighting instead. If it were known from below, that the motion sensors were all functional, one could unleash a watchdog on the light bulbs... ------------------------------------------------------------ Program Content for 'Setup' If Time is Sunrise - 1 hour Then Run program '*Driveway sensor okay?' (Else Path) Run program '*Sidewalk sensor okay?' (Else Path) Run program '*Patio sensor okay?' (Else Path) Run program '*Stairwell sensor okay?' (Else Path) Run program '*LivingRoom sensor okay?' (Else Path) Run program '*Door sensor okay?' //not installed yet so true Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Assume the motion sensors don't work - if they are working, they will complain later... ------------------------------------------------------------ Program Content for '*Stairwell sensor okay?' If X10 'C6/Off (11)' is Received //this is the "not dark" signal from C5 Then - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Stairwell motion sensor is working ------------------------------------------------------------ Program Content for 'Check batteries!' If Time is Last Run Time for 'Setup' + 3 hours And ( Program '*Driveway sensor okay?' is False Or Program '*Sidewalk sensor okay?' is False Or Program '*Patio sensor okay?' is False Or Program '*Stairwell sensor okay?' is False Or Program '*Door sensor okay?' is False Or Program '*LivingRoom sensor okay?' is False ) Then Run program 'Notify' Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') If any of the motion sensors are not working, raise a stink. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Program Content for 'Notify' If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Send Notification to All Send X10 'B6/On (3)' // ring the buzzer Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

GPG - From what I hear, v2.3 will be a vast expansion on trigger capabilities. Maybe you will come across a more elegant way to do what you want, then. But hey, if it works, why break it? When I first got the colored lenses for my KPLs, I went a bit overboard with the color coding. Things became more distracting than it was worth. So I backed off, using a scheme close to the following: Blue for fans Green for outside lights Red for computer power Yellow for small plug-in appliances (crockpot, radios, etc) To me it seemed best to leave white for almost everything else.

I finally grabbed an unused tabletop KPL and started playing around with Buttons Grouping to see what it did. For those of us who still don't quite get it, I think I have a real-world example where buttons grouping would be nice. I might use it upstairs with a ceiling fan: Assume an 8 button KPL with buttons: A B C D E F G H Put blue lenses on B,D and F and label them "Fan hi", "Fan med" and "Fan lo", respectively. Then put them all in Group 1. This makes a nice vertical "bar graph" type interface, where only one of the three buttons are lit, OR none (fan off). One button-push gets you anything the fan can do. Of course, this would only handle the user interface end! I did a similar stunt with a 2-speed stove fan some months back. It required 2 X-10 appliance modules - one for fan power (on/off), and a second for fan speed (lo/hi) which powered a 4PDT relay to route the (switched) power to the hi or lo speed "taps" on the fan (and appropriate indicator lamps).