Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

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Part III: Home Security

for a radio signal that carries X10 commands and then retransmits the com-

mands over the power lines.

You’ve already established that the lock will send A2 ON and A2 OFF sig-

nals when you lock or unlock the door. In the simplest system, you can plug

a lamp directly into the RF base and set the base’s address to A1. You can

also configure any other devices you want to control to use the address A1.

This allows the lock to communicate directly with the controlled devices

via the RF base.

If you include the intelligent dispatcher, no device should be configured

with the address A2. Instead, allow only the CM11A to pick up the com-

mands so that they can be used to trigger scripted commands to be trans-

mitted back to the power lines. Any devices addressed by the script will

respond as requested.

The Controlled Devices

To control the lights, you need to install modules that will respond to X10

commands by switching the light on or off. Let’s now turn our focus to the

controlled devices component.

There are a number of chapters in this book that focus on X10-controlled

lighting, so refer to Chapter 1, Automate a Light, for details of how to install

the light switches. Instead, this section will discuss the planning involved in

setting up the controlled devices component of your system.

As stated in the Project Overview, there are three major goals ...