x10 for lights.

[pilgrim1]

Hi Folks, I'm new to X10 and would appreciate some advice. I'm away on holiday soon and would like to control a few of my main house lights (lamps on timers look too obvious IMHO) I was looking at the harmony module (HDM1) as I do not have a neutral. So far so good, however the issue I have is that all the rooms in which I wish to place the controllers have dimmers installed already My wife likes these dimmers and does not want to remove them, can this be done? I don't care if the X10 dims, just would like to keep the dimmer I have in place. Assuming this can be done I plan to buy a controller that would run both from the PC and standalone, (ideally connected by Ethernet). Does such a thing exist? Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

ChrisC

[toscal]

You can't use a dimmer switch with X10 lighting module. What would be possible is to use an appliance module to switch the live feed to the dimmer on and off. Not an ideal situation as you also need a neutral connection, and if you switch the light off via the dimmer you lose the X10 control.. I have the Marmitek version of the HDM1 and it works very well. My wife loves it. Took a few days for her to get used to it.

[pilgrim1]

You can't use a dimmer switch with X10 lighting module. What would be possible is to use an appliance module to switch the live feed to the dimmer on and off. Not an ideal situation as you also need a neutral connection, and if you switch the light off via the dimmer you lose the X10 control.. I have the Marmitek version of the HDM1 and it works very well. My wife loves it. Took a few days for her to get used to it.

Hi thanks for the update, it's a shame. The dimmers will have to stay as my wife spent an arm and a leg (getting me) fitting matching chrome crabtree flat, screwless plugs and switches. So no X10 in that room ;-(

My living room is still in the fray as it has momentary switches (still no neutral), so do readers have any suggestions for a PC connectable/stand alone controller.

Regards

ChrisC.

[toscal]

For a stand alone controller you can't beat the Homevision Controller from CSI. www.csi3.com Its brilliant. I've had mine for over a year and its been excellent. The Homevision forum is very active and emails from CSI themselves are answered very promptly. I even got a free firmware upgrade to the latest version about 6 months ago when I realised mine didn't have the latest version. You can get internet access with it via a PC and I believe some user have achieved basic internet access,with pic based servers etc.
For PC based systems its got to be Homeseer- www.homeseer.com

[pilgrim1]

For a stand alone controller you can't beat the Homevision Controller from CSI. www.csi3.com Its brilliant. I've had mine for over a year and its been excellent. The Homevision forum is very active and emails from CSI themselves are answered very promptly. I even got a free firmware upgrade to the latest version about 6 months ago when I realised mine didn't have the latest version. You can get internet access with it via a PC and I believe some user have achieved basic internet access,with pic based servers etc.
For PC based systems its got to be Homeseer- www.homeseer.com

Hi, many thanks for your advice, much appreciated. I've just had a look at this, a very nice toy indeed. I'll would hope to be taking it down the Linux route as I've already a Fedura based PC looking after my cameras. At some point I hope to bring all of this under the control of one bit of software, for now however it will do nicely.

My thanks once again for your kind reply.

Regards

ChrisC.

[toscal]

Linux is not a problem for the Homevision as a guy called Schelte Bron has produced a program called HomevisionXL which works on both Windows and Linux based sysems. Its based on the Windows program that CSI ship with the unit.
I use HomevisionXL all the time now. It also has a nice control interface that lets you make up customised contol screens. Take a look here http://hv.tclcode.com/
Also have a look at the HV forums http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homevision-users/
and have a look here for a few examples of the control screens
http://hv.tclcode.com/control.html

[pilgrim1]

Linux is not a problem for the Homevision as a guy called Schelte Bron has produced a program called HomevisionXL which works on both Windows and Linux based sysems. Its based on the Windows program that CSI ship with the unit.
I use HomevisionXL all the time now. It also has a nice control interface that lets you make up customised contol screens. Take a look here http://hv.tclcode.com/
Also have a look at the HV forums http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homevision-users/
and have a look here for a few examples of the control screens
http://hv.tclcode.com/control.html

Once again I bow down to your knowledge My sincere thanks for all your help, looks as if I have some major reading to do.

Regards

ChrisC.