Home Automation
The Idea
I've always had this grand idea to automate my home. For example, I want to walk into a room and the lights come on automatically. Ultimately, I want microphones throughout the house to pick up voice commands, and a computer will use voice recognition to do what I say.
I ran across a company (and protocol) called X-10. The protocol allows signals to be sent over existing electrical wiring. A computer with a special adapter plugged into its serial port can send a command over the electrical lines to turn on a light remotely. The light has an adapter between its electrical plug and the outlet. That adapter listens for signals over the lines, and supplies or denies electricity to the light.
This setup wouldn't work for items with "soft" power switches, like newer television sets. If you simply plug a TV into an outlet, it's not going to automatically turn on. The X-10 adapter is basically doing the same thing as manually plugging and unplugging an appliance. If it doesn't work manually, it's not going to work automatically.
The Reality
In my efforts to get this set up, I spent a reasonable amount of money on the X-10 modules only to find out that to get everything set up reliably, it was going to take a lot more money.
The motion detectors don't work reliably. Lights sometimes will randomly or periodically turn on and off. X-10 wall switches work sometimes, but they almost always don't work by remote.
A possible source of these problems is that stray signals are coming into the house, by means of natural occurances or someone else may be using an X-10 system. Also, our electrical lines may be getting stray interference. There may be an appliance in my house that puts noise onto the electrical lines. There may be stray RF signals similar to what the remotes use.
The reality of the situation set in when I understood that I would need to spend more money to test the lines and to fix the noise problem. Maybe it wouldn't be all that much, but at this point, I am frustrated with the situation. I have a feeling that these problems will be difficult to track down, and I may have to spend a lot of money hoping to fix the problems.
My Conclusions
I have given up on the idea of automating my home. I have left a few modules in place that still provide some value. Perhaps I'll get the urge to go through with everything someday, but for now I think it is best to wait for home automation to get more popular to encourage more competition in the marketplace. More competition means better and cheaper products.
Once the products are more reliable, I'll deal with the noise on my electrical lines. Until then, why bother?
Content updated: 23 Feb 2003