Homeowner Forum / Home Automation / March 2004

I have one of these units on my water heater. It has a passive coupler, and
optional repeater function. I am having some problems on my power leg that
doesn't have my X-10 controller, and I was curious as to how effective the
coupler and repeater in the ELK unit really is. I'm using ...

i was looking on ebay for cat6  cable in bluk for the rewireing of my
house and i found a massive varation of prices per/ft, why is that? is
their diffrent quiality within the Cat6 std.
Also when i run cables do i have to cut the cable or can i just take

Anything new on Z-wave ?   I was in a local Radio Shack - they said they
soon will be carring home automation products from Sylvania - I'm assuming
Z-wave.
I don't know what "soon" means or if confirmed.

Hey all,
Is there a good online store to purchase CCTV cameras? I'm looking for
about 4 cameras:
Front door

In the newly constructed house, the electrician has put in cat5 wiring
(as per our instruction) and home run them to basement. I also asked
them to put in RJ-45 jacks on walls instead of phone jacks. I am
looking for suggestions as to how to terminate them in the basement.

Looking for any and all experience x10 user's are having with checking and
controlling home temperature remotely.   I would like to phone in check the
temperature, then adjust the tstat all in the same conversation.  Thanks in
advance for any assistance.

We are having to wire a house that has 20 cable tv jacks (yes 20), and
want to do this without getting complicated.  My first thought was to
take a 3 way splitter into (3) 8 way splitters and that would give me
enough taps.  I also think this will probably yield a pretty poor CATV

Equipment:
   2-speed hood fan
   220V, 20A cooktop, 2 burners
   [OmniPro II]

I'm in the middle of running some new wiring in my house. I have a distribution panel in the basement for home running
everything.
My primary goal is to be able to listen to our main stereo in each bedroom, without spending a lot of money on the
components right now. In the future, ...

A couple of weeks ago I started a thread about a wattmeter with an RS-232
interface.
The March issue of Circuit Cellar has an article by Jeff Bachiochi which
uses a new Hall Effect sensor from Allegro MicroSystems and a PIC12F675 to

Portable multi-axis Motion Control
I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering and pretty new to
the motion control field but I have been kind of giving myself a crash
course.  I need some help with the motion control aspects of the

I was pretty sure that you could string four 3 volt LEDs together in series
and connect them to a 12V source.  I posted that in one of the automation
NGs a while back and somebody read me the riot act about using a regulator
instead.

I'm willing to believe it's my problem here.
But I'm not having joy with X10 here (and I'm not sure about the
IR - yet).
I got an ocelot.  It's redundant to some stuff I have, but it

I was pretty sure that you could string four 3 volt LEDs together in series
and connect them to a 12V source.  I posted that in one of the automation
NGs a while back and somebody read me the riot act about using a regulator
instead.

I have a Keypadlinc 8 and a cheap X10 switch on the same circuit.
Suddenly the other day I found neither one of them works. The cheap
X10 switch does not operate the light any more and the keypadlinc
doesn't have and LEDs, any lights in the buttons. I've followed the