X10 Automation

Last Sunday I was looking at lighting design on the web again. With our plan to get cover the dreaded vermiculite ceiling, we'll need lights. All the lighting sites say use a mix of lighting and we didn't just want to put in newer versions of the overhead dome lights when we finally got the new ceiling. We have these lamps around the room but it's quite awkward to get to the switches to turn them on and off because of other furniture in the way so we rarely use them.

So last Sunday I ordered 2 appliance modules, a TM13 appliance module/transceiver, a little x10 wireless remote control and a cm15a usb computer interface. The remote control was part of the kit with the appliance modules and was my backup plan if I couldn't get the usb driver working with linux very quickly.

The package arrived on Wednesday. As toys go it almost qualifies as a dismal failure - I plugged a lamp into the TM13, pressed the corresponding button on the remote control and it worked. Straight way. I didn't have to modify anything - that's no fun :-)

Just as a record of what information I found:

Then I plugged the usb module into my computer. We're using debian testing 64 bit for our tv box now. Found the module code on line thanks to Linux home automation. Got the linux headers kernel package for our kernel.
Found this post on modernizing the module a bit for a later 2.6 kernel.

Read the README code and built the module.

I found various versions of mh integration of the CM15a - and finally found what I think is the latest version which worked.
useful post

So it works - except for some reason the power point the tv is plugged into - probably the crappy old wiring in our apartment block.

Using misterhhouse by the way.