Homeowner Forum / Home Automation / August 2006

Are there any standards, even de facto ones related to controlling
light switches, dimmers and other such devices over ZigBee networks?
IIRC Insteon and/or Control4 sell or will be selling ZigBee devices.
Has anyone reverse engineered any of those or other devices on the

I have a question that I hope someone can answer here in Australia we dont
get the same x10 switches that are availale in the US, I like the Clipsal
C-Bus switches and these switches appear to be momentary action switches
anyways.

I posted this as an ad because it's for a book you can purchase. I'm
not really trying to push the book just everyone know I finally
finished it. :-) Yesterday the book was $15.49 on Amazon, today it's
$16.49, hurry it might go up again tomorrow (and what are all those

I have a church with approx 35 ahu's.  These are mostly home-style units
with a few big 10-ton package units.
I'm looking for your thoughts as to approaches to take / vendors or
equipment to use to control these units.

I have a Lynx-R Wireless Keypad and would like to control via X10 two lights
at two different locations in my home. Can someone recommend an X10 device
to use with this keypad?

Is there a filter I can put on a coax splitter so an injected IR signal
doesn't get attenuated?
Working on this project at my mom's house:
She has a Tivo in her bedroom which she would like to watch in the

Does anyone know of a system that will allow me to open and close my
sliding gate by striking an "F" key?

I've seen how people can use the WGL transceiver to read these devices but
has anything else been developed that could be used with a non-pc device
such as the Ocelot?

Here you can read books free and buy all tickets
you can find all tickets here:
http://allticket.yourfreewebspace.com/
you can read books free:

looking at:
1. a great room
2. 3 bedrooms
3. kitchen

It seems that big companies like Microsoft and Intel are promoting UPnP
technology(www.upnp.org) to standardize networking of various home
devices. However, I do not know many products supporting this standard.
Especially in this forum, I rarely see people discussing it. To me, its

I am planning to purchase a DIY home alarm system and I was wondering if
I could get your opinions about the alarm systems present here:
http://www.intellahome.com/shop/bapacks.html
Systems that captured my attention:

heya guys,
building a new house, going to deck it out, I am an electrician by
trade so wiring is no issue with me, I am also building the house
myself so I can design whatever I want.

Motorola Homesight is a wireless system including 2.4GHz motion sensing
cameras, 418MHz sensors (door/window, temperature, motion, water, etc.),
light/appliance modules that can be monitored over the Internet.
    http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/hs/flash_experience.asp

Is anyone reading their water meter with a PC? I gather it's just a serial
(RS485?) connection to the outside world? I did a quick search but did not
find anything useful. I'd like to log the usage of the sprinklers.
TIA.