Home Automation with Perl and X10

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Home Automation with Perl and X10

• Mike Schilli, Yahoo!
• 06/25/2007

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Whats X10?

• Sender sends signals over power lines
• Receiver switches electrical devices on/off
• Cheap Technology
• Sender 10
• Receiver 10

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What can you do with X10?

• Examples include
• Water your plants
• Reboot your cable modem
• Control any device via Gaim/Jabber

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X10 Signal Flow
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X10 CM11 Control Unit

• Serial plug connects to PC
• Power plug injects X10 signals into power line
• lt 10 plus shipping on Ebay
• Dont have a serial port? Buy a PCI card
  (ttyS4/5)
• Alternatively CM17 (RF)

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No Serial Port?

• PC 10 PCI card
• /dev/ttyS4
• Mac 30 Keyspan 19HS
• /dev/ttyS0

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Receiver

• E.g. connected to your Cable Modem

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Protocol

• One four-bit house code (A-P)
• One or more four-bit unit code(s) (1-16)
• One four-bit command
• Example
• House Code K, Unit 9, Turn on

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How X10 transmits

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How X10 transmits

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Protocol

• 1110 Starting sequence
• Binary 1 Presence, Absence
• Binary 0 Absence, Presence
• Each signal sent twice
• Overall data transfer 20 bits/sec

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Setting up a serial port

• Init serial port
• use DeviceSerialPort
• my serial DeviceSerialPort-gtnew(
• /dev/ttyS0, undef)
• serial-gtbaudrate(4800)
• Send command
• use ControlX10CM11
• ControlX10CM11send(serial,
• house_code . unit_code)
• ControlX10CM11send(serial,
• house_code . J) JON KOFF

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Receivers

• Lamp Module
• Triac Solid State
• On/Off/Dimming
• No Appliances or electronic devices
• Appliance Module
• Relay switches On/Off
• Maintains last state during power outages

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Example 1 Lights on/off with Gaim

• NetJabber

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Example 1 Lights on/off with Gaim

• A Jabber listener performs X10CM11 commands

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Example 2 X10 Console

• YUI components for ajaxed web console
• Reboot routers, print servers, DSL modem

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Example 3 Water your Plants

• Aquarium Pump in Water container
• Switched on/off by X10
• Host checks weather report (WeatherCom) to
  determine amount of water
• Secured by external timer

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Video Demo
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X10Home

• use X10Home
• my x10-gtX10Home-gtnew()
• Address services by name
• x10-gtsend("bedroom_lights", "on")
• Also remembers status

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X10Home

• x10.conf sample file
• module ControlX10CM11
• device "/dev/ttyS0
• receivers
• - name office_lights
• code K10
• desc Office Back Lights
• - name water
• code K11
• desc Plant Sprinkler

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Problems with X10

• No security on the X10 level
• No feedback with cheap units
• Signals get lost
• Power outages might affect outcome
• Two senders Collisions
• Slow (1 sec/command)

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Precautions

• Use Fail Safe strategies
• Limit potential damage
• Consider additional autonomous devices like
  digital timers

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QA

• Questions?

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Thanks!

• Contact mschilli_at_yahoo-inc.com

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References

• X10 YUI Console http//www.linux-magazin.de/heft_a
  bo/ausgaben/2007/04/heimschaltwarte
• http//www.linux-magazine.com/issue/50/Perl_Buildi
  ng_a_Jabber_Bot.pdf
• ftp//ftp.x10.com/pub/manuals
• http//misterhouse.net
• Moshe Bar, Home Automation with Perl, TPJ,
  02/2003

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References (continued)

• http//forums.cabling-design.com/X10-and-Linux-art
  icle12453--49.htm