Homeowner Forum / Home Automation / June 2008

The electric supply here is 240 volts single
phase, 60 cycle with earth ground.
Several sites have warned against trying to use
any kind of voltage converters.

I'm planning to install a new lighting circuit with dimmable 3-way
switches and I want to use some of the Vizia switches because of the
dimmable remote feature. I noticed on the Leviton website that they
have an updated line called Vizia+ that has put the dim buttons and

I have a potential customer that has a house built in the 50's.  The
electrical switches are an odd style in that the plates sit horizontal and
the toggles are more like rockers about the size of your thumb.
First I am looking for a name, style, or model on this type of switch.  I ...

I am from India, and am working on a project where I need to automate
the closing and opening of venetian blinds.
I have gone thru some materials on the net, and found that at a few
places, DC motors(24V) have been used, while at some stepper motors

was considering to get a roomba but from this clip (flash link below)
on their site
it appears that the robots movement is similar to a bump n go battery
powered toy car,totally random movements.

I need that when a device A(using maybe a MAKE controller) sends a
wireless command,  an xbee device B should be able to turn on/off a
light bulb on wall, preferebly via a digital dimmer. Here, the light
bulbs etc. run at 220V AC.

Anyone know of a mod to make an X-10 lamp module immune to dimming?  If not,
does anyone have any suggestions on how to accomplish it?  I have lots of
extra modules to experiment on, and it would seem that there's a control
line that tells the triac how much to "chop" that could be ...

Home Automation http://www.lvhsystems.com/
Home Alarm Systems
Phone Control Systems
CCTV Online

I need to wire 8 phone jacks to 1 phone line using a 66 block for my
home. I have looked and looked and all I can find are over-complicated
wiring diagrams that I do not understand. Please help me.
First of all, I am not using Cat5 cable, just regular phone cable (I

I want to add motion sensor and timer control to front porch and
driveway lights for convenience and to save power.  I have no x10 or
Insteon equipment right now.  I've been looking mostly at smarthome
stuff.

FWIW, I have taken to going around the house ahead of the Roomba with a
corner brush made of some moulding that has a angled pot brush hot-glued
onto the end.  I push all the stuff out from the corners into the center of
the room and then Roomba does the rest.  Hopefully, they'll ...

Hello all, I am kinda new to this kind of stuff and being a computer
hardware nerd and my roommate being a small time programmer we wanted
to see how this would be set up and a final cost of everything we
need. So a couple of questions.

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Here is what I intend to do:
I need a "MAKE controller" or something to intelligently control the
window blinds.
I need the following sensors to begin with, to send data to the MAKE

For some time I've been using an old Dell Optiplex P3/600 for some home
control and A/V functions.  It is a big tower with a number of PCI and
ISA cards, three older hard drives, and a CDROM.  I was always pleased
that it lights no LEDs on the power scale of the 1000VA UPS to which ...