hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1548.txt

Episode: 1548
Title: HPR1548: Heyu and X10
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1548/hpr1548.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:55:04

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To follow you, it's an extract from the Colonel Panic Goldcast where Jonathan Nadu from
the Sonar project and I've discussed the X10 home automation stuff and how you can utilize
Linux to run your house.
Hopefully people might get a little bit out of it but find it interesting.
Hey Peter, I had a question with you though.
Yeah Jonathan.
You messed around a little bit with like the home automation stuff, right?
With like the X10 stuff and everything?
Yep yep, all the time.
What are you using to control all the X10 stuff?
Hey you, it's just a little command line thing and lately I've been playing with
Dome and a slink.
I'll get you some links to it.
Dome and a slink is like a web interface for it but also I found a really nice little application
for the telephones on Android.
Yeah, it's really good like when I sit out in the back brand.
I don't know if you heard but I put a fountain in the dam for Jude for Christmas and everything
so we can sit out on the brand and just on our telephones turn on and off and stuff.
I guess.
So like what's what piece of hardware do you have that plugs into the computer that controls
all the X10 stuff?
What are you using for that?
It's called a CME 11 or 12.
It's either a 12 over there or 12 here.
And it's just, it's a module that's a big bigger than a double adapter.
It goes into the power point and then you plug in something in front of it.
It's something in front of it in two weeks but that just has a USB cable that goes into
the back here in a wallet in my particular case, the mid box.
Oh no, I'll get you some links.
Are you in a cost planner?
No, you can just send it to a feedback at sonar.project.org.
Yeah, that one.
Yeah, sonar-project.
Or I'll email the kernel panic on Cass e-mail address and you can just reply to that or something.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Do that.
No, I'll just like some links together for you.
But how are you in itself is just a brilliant, and you just keep developing it.
It just keeps getting better and better.
Yeah, that's pretty, so I'm getting interested with looking into some home automation stuff for
people.
So, so Peter, that he, you thing ties into the Sam 11 or Sam 12 thing you're talking about?
Well, there's also something called a firecracker, which plugs in the back of your computer.
And that, I think, I said that radio frequencies, because that's, that's originally what the
how you remote was a radio frequency that went off to just the receiver that's plugged into
the wall.
And the firecracker just sends radio frequency off to it instead.
It's cheaper.
But Sam 11 is not really expensive.
I think there's only about a hundred bucks anyway.
You're probably thinking about cheap enough.
Okay.
I think they are.
X 10 stuff is dirt shaped Jonathan.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I thought, I found a website set like so in seeing X 10 adapter's like, I saw one.
I was like, perusing this website camera.
It was off time ahead now, but one of them had like this like an adapter.
You put in your mailbox.
And when the mailman comes, it alerts you when you know, hey, your mail's here.
Yeah, I know there's so much stuff.
And you can do.
I actually bought it through.
You know, I didn't look into it enough.
I just assumed it would be the same, which was probably super keen to do.
But over here, I think it operates at 433 megahertz.
And over there, it's 900 or something.
Don't quite me on that.
I can't remember.
But the frequencies are totally different.
Because over here, I think I paid about $60 for one of the infrared.
You know, it's just like a passive infrared transmitter that sits there.
You know, like your lights as you walk past.
Right.
Okay.
So with the HAU one, you can program it to send a signal to any one of your modules.
So I could have pulled one in the shed.
So when the car, we drove the car home, put it in the shed.
So the HAU, the signal and turn every single light on, you know, from the outside.
That's cool.
All that sort of stuff.
Yeah, it really is.
I think they have about 60 bucks here.
But before I read into it, I bought, I think, three off eBay for $11, brand new from America.
Of course, when I got a few different frequencies.
So that's nice.
Good to meet you.
But that's the top price.
Yes.
So much cheaper over there than here.
Let me just clarify how all this is working too.
So virtually what you're going to start off with is a remote that's radio frequency remote.
In your wall, you have a radio receiver that picks up the command, then transmits that over your power lines to each module,
whether that being a science module, a lighting module, you know, a socket module that's actually where you plug your bulb in,
now in my particular case, I have modules built into a lot of my light switches.
You can also get modules that go in your wall that go between your light switches and your light.
So there's numerous ways of doing it.
Also, but what you'll have to do is get, if you have like a harmony infrared remote, then you have to get a receiver that picks the infrared up
and then converts that and then transmits the signal across your power lines.
And there's a few ways to doing that, one of which I have on the wall.
So you can also get T chain remotes that are basically the ones I have can do all.
They have four buttons each button.
You can program with a module number, you know, whether that be a three to turn your entry hall lights on or a seven to turn your exterior lights on as you get home in the car.
What that does is that sends it off to the radio frequency module that's plugged into one of your power points.
Once again, that gets received the signal from your radio device and then transmits that across the power line.
So that's virtually how this is working.
So with with Hey you, can you?
What was I going to ask like because I saw some like crazy scenarios like could you set up like even like on like door openers like let's say let's say if someone's in a wheelchair and someone comes to the door and they want to let them in.
Could they essentially use Hey you tied into Android phone or whatever and like push a button open the door for them. Can they do stuff like that?
Yeah, I think you can buy stuff up like that quite simply because all you need is a solenoid some sort of actuator in the door, which you can buy plenty of door locks now to do that sort of thing.
Then you would just use an appliance module, which is simply on and off that that activates the actuator or solenoid that unmatches the door.
I mean, I know that you could buy something that even if you couldn't buy something like that, you all you got to do is find an on-off actuator and for a door lock and yeah, it would be very easy to do.
But I'd imagine there's already something built for it if we look at it. I have a look for that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think I want to start looking deeper into like stuff like this.
Now with the X10 stuff, does the firecracker or the Sam 11 or 12 thing?
Does it automatically pick up on all the X10 stuff and know what it is?
Or do you have to like with Hey you tell it, Hey, this is what this module is. This is what it does.
Do you have to kind of program the system to know what it is or does it automatically know what it does?
No, well, okay, what you do is you've got, I think there's a start today. I use age. I think you can run 256 modules on house code A.
Then you can go to B for another 256. I haven't got a thing here.
I think it goes up to H or something. So there's plenty of modules with.
The game is linked. You go through and you tell it, okay, that is a light switch and it's a dimmable light switch.
That way, purely your icon on your web interface or on the telephone, you've got a little thumb slider.
You can slide that off the right to brighten or dim the light.
That's cool.
It is cool. Really. I've actually been thinking of doing a bloody HPR on it.
It's just so cheap.
It's only when you get into doing curtains and blinds.
You start spending a lot of money on the motor, especially for blinds.
And once again, you could probably do a lot cheaper now.
Because I did a huge one of the blind at the back to go up and down, you know,
and we could do that from the bedroom and it automatically closes at two o'clock in the afternoon.
As the sun gets around the back of the house, it opens at six o'clock in the morning, all this sort of stuff.
You can do all this.
Just a little bit more data on the CM12, which is the computer interface device,
although it's plugged into the, in my case, the mythbox.
Even if the mythbox is often that you can still program the CM12,
which you cannot do with the fly cracker. So the CM12, you can program with macros.
As an example, one of my macros will, and you can use time, or certain keywords,
like dawn and dusk, dawn plus 20 minutes, dusk plus, whatever.
So you can go through, and my front curtains at dawn will open.
As I think I mentioned, my blind, my rear blind at two o'clock is the sun gets around the back of the house
and starts to set in the west. In summer, you don't want to hot summer sun coming through into the kitchen.
So that's programmed to a clock to close, but at dawn, it's programmed to open.
If it is, in fact, closed when we get a bed at night, so it'll open up and let light into the kitchen.
So that's one of the really handy things with the CM12 as well,
that you do not need a computer hooked up with this all the time.
You can hook your laptop up to a program with certain macros, and then unplug your thing,
and it'll sit there and just do, you know, like turn on my stereo lights, get turned on a dusk,
and they turned off a dusk plus 90 minutes.
And because you're also in your X10 configuration file, you're putting in your longitude and latitude
that it knows that obviously here, in summer, you know, it's not getting dark until 48, 39 o'clock.
So the external lights don't come until 9 o'clock in summer, but in winter, instead of just saying, come on,
at say 8 o'clock each time, or six or whatever, that way in winter, it automatically says,
okay, well, it's winter dusk, it's now six at my particular longer-tuned ladder,
which is how you get the picture anyway.
So it's changing all the time through the year, so your lights aren't running during the day
or coming on until 8 o'clock at night.
So, you know, that's another really handy thing with the CM12.
But now, for your original question, all you do is how you, to use the most basically,
all you do is, you might type, how you on and address code A3.
Okay, now, A3 will turn on, whether that's a lighting module or an appliance module,
there's each of different types of modules, but okay, if it's the blind one on, it'll go to full up.
Okay, now, if it's a dimmable light module, you would just take how you full bright
by then the module number 813, and then it's from zero to 22.
So if you type 11, it'll then go, and I'll tell you another thing about that,
watch, which is in that in a second, but it'll then go to full bright on,
and then slowly dim back to 50%.
Right.
If you typed that in how you, and you only had a lighting module, but not a dimmable one,
nothing would happen.
Okay, so you don't have to program the computer
interface module at all.
It just sits there waiting, waiting to send the signal over the pair lines.
The only time you've got to tell anything, what sort of modules you have is for the domus,
domus link, and that's only so I can get the right icon for you.
And then if it's a dimmable light module, you'll have a non-off switch,
but underneath that, on the web page you'll have, I think it's got about seven,
it's like, it's a line with seven sections, you're seven little bars.
You can click on the middle one, it'll dim to 50%, if you click, you know,
halfway between that, it'll go to 75%.
But that's the only thing you're doing that for.
Yeah, that's pretty sweet.
The programming file on the Android phone.
Does that, is it made by you, or it just works with like,
X10 stuff?
Are they like tied together in any way?
No, this is all open source software.
How you, I can't, I should look it up, but I'll look it up and see,
and he just wrote it, right?
And then just the bloke rate domus link, or domus link, see, he just wrote,
there's a few web interfaces out there for how you, but that's,
people are just decided, you know, I wanted to project, you know,
and they just wrote it, really good.
And I'm having just discovered the Android one the other day,
and I was thinking of doing, I've got a, you have to excuse me,
because I can't remember the name of all the modules anymore,
because, you know, I don't play with it so much anymore.
I've got a thing up on the wall that's got, it's got like,
it's got four buttons, and that's happened down.
Then you've got an all on all off in a dim bright,
and then it's got a slider along the bottom, which you can,
so that four buttons get work modules, one, two, three, four,
you slide the slider, then they work, five, six, seven, eight,
slide the slider, 19, 11, 12, each.
Okay, okay, I think so.
Yeah, but what I was thinking of doing,
if this packs it in, was getting just cheap,
try one of these tablets, and mounting them on the wall,
and taking the power forum at the back and down,
and wire them into the house, that way.
So all you see is this tablet on the wall,
and then I will have that just on the,
you know, a famous link, you know,
have a famous link open on a web page,
and that way you'll have like a, you know,
touch screen interface on a few of the walls,
like up to, and there would be a cheap way to do it.
I mean, you can buy a decent childhood tablet now,
for $66.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, and they would look a lot more flashed
than this thing I've got up on the wall now.
Which, yeah, that's not bad,
but a touch screen is going to look more oppressive, doesn't it?
They're just to clarify once again,
the module on the wall is the IRF7243 microcontrial module.
Now, what it's doing, not only does it have all the buttons on it,
it is also one of the devices that will receive
the radio frequency signal.
The other one is another module just called a team 13
that plugs into any wall socket,
it has a tiny little area on it,
and you can then plug,
it's sort of like a double adapter,
you can plug an appliance or something into it,
so it acts as an appliance module as well.
But it also is the receiver module
for your radio frequency remote or your firecracker.
Now, the IRF7243 microcontrial module on your wall,
not only is it the radio frequency receiver module,
it is also the infrared receiver module
that I mentioned earlier,
so when I have my Harmony remote in my hand,
I can then send signals to it by the Harmony remote,
whether that be all lights on,
all lights off,
all appliances off, whole house off,
whatever, yeah, just turn the lounge and lights on
and demo me, et cetera, et cetera,
you can call this, you can program,
put in the, in the Harmony remote,
which is infrared,
point of that at the microcontrial module on the wall,
gets, it receives the signal,
and then it then is plugged into the, you know,
your power point,
and it then transmits that across,
that signal across to whichever receiver module
that you want to turn on and off.
So, that's how that works,
if you do want to use an infrared remote.
Yeah, can you also control, like,
IP cameras and stuff,
with like, hey, you or whatever,
can you like, send up cameras out the house
and like,
tie all into the same system,
or would you be looking at another program to do that?
Yeah, I'm not sure about that one,
because I just use motion these days,
because I've only got the one camera
at the front, and I sometimes,
muck around with another one,
I put on the bloody robotic vacuum cleaner
for a bit of primarily day off.
Yeah, it's fun to do when you're bored.
As it goes, I'll have the hallway,
you can watch what it's doing,
chasing the cattle,
whatever it's bloody doing.
But, um, zone minder,
don't quote me on this,
because I used to muck around with zone mind
quite a few years ago,
and I'm sure zone minder can be programmed
that if, actually,
motion might do this too, Jonathan,
if any of your cameras pick up a motion,
they start away,
they automatically start recording on my mithbox,
because that's where it's all, you know,
all run from.
But I think you can all set it up
to send a signal through the computer interface,
the CM11 or CM12,
it's 11 over there, it's 12 here.
It'll send a signal to turn on, say,
you have to find lights or something,
and so I'm pretty sure that's right,
they do all tie in together.
You can do all that already.
Is there like a Android app
that works with that stuff too,
or do you need to do that from the computer?
I'm not sure about that one.
I, um,
you're not not sure about that one.
Um, see,
well, that end, again,
I just, just say,
clarify this a bit too.
Um, the Android app is tying into
a dominoes link,
which is running on my mithbox,
you know,
which is running your patchy server.
So you need a patchy setup,
yeah, for the Android,
because that's what you're doing.
You're logging on to your patchy,
um, you know,
web server running,
and the dominoes link has to be
running on that to the Android app to work.
Yeah.
Okay, I see.
So thank you.
If it see,
I was going to do this with my Raspberry Pi,
um,
set it
and just put the home automation on my Raspberry Pi
regionally,
and then I thought, well,
yeah, I've got it all set up on the mithbox.
It's running more or less all the time,
anyway, so there's no point in doing it.
Yeah, that was actually my next question,
I was wondering if you think it would run on a pi or not.
Oh, well,
as long as you can compile how you for it,
I've no doubt patchy runs on a pi beautifully,
you know,
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's just how you,
and if you know,
a lot more about compile and software,
if,
um,
this way would have to have to
have written it to be compiled on an arm.
Is that the way it works?
Or can you,
could you take his software and compile it on the arm yourself?
Yeah.
As long as you have the source,
you should be able to compile it for the home architecture.
Yeah.
Well, the source is all out there.
You get the source when you get each program.
So, yeah.
And now,
the other thing with,
um,
and it's going to help what better is that the problem with X10
and one of the reasons it's so cheap,
is it's only one way communication.
So,
okay.
Yeah.
You understand the issue.
What are you going to do with X10?
You know,
to get it done for critical stuff like you got to turn
on a life support system.
Hey,
how you and X10 is not what you going to use.
Because I send a signal to my fountain.
I get no verification.
The fountain's turned on unless you know,
I obviously walk out and look at it.
Right.
Yeah.
Um,
when you get into the CB,
and stuff like that,
that's really expensive,
but two way communication.
It sends a signal.
It waits for a reply back from the module to say,
signal I've turned on. How you doesn't do that. And if you've got, once again, the filters
and stuff in the modules are a lot better. But once upon a time, if you had fluorescent
lights or something that puts a lot of noise into your power lines, because this is what
it's all been transmitted over, maybe you had a fluorescent light or you might have,
you know, your 12 volt dimmable halogen lights. Well, if one of your little transformers
for your 12 volt halogen light is noisy, puts a lot of, then it might send a signal across
your, you know, house from one end to the other end is good.
Is the ZIGB stuff the same as X10, or are they two different things? Sorry what was that
called? ZIGB, I believe it's the name of the company. They do stuff a lot like X10, but
I can't remember if X10 is the same thing as ZIGB, or if they're two different companies
because I've heard the ZIGB stuff will actually do like mesh networking with their devices.
Um, yeah, I've never heard of that one. I'm afraid. Okay. Cool. I have a lot of information
to work with. Like I said, I'll email you. So you have my whatever email address and
you can do it. If you get those links, get an idea if you want to do some more homework.
Yeah, for sure. Jonathan will, um, yes, it should. I'll have a look for that thing you mentioned
before or check it out. Um, and, uh, what we might do is, well, we should do a HPR on
it all, but you're setting it up. Yeah, right. You could probably just cut out this last
10 minutes and make that an episode. Well, you make that part one. There you go. That
sounds good. I was just looking up the ZIGB. We, uh, um, see if I smart that all used the same
sort of protocols, you know, but they're probably, they're probably. Yeah. I think they do.
Yeah. I think they're slightly different. I mean, they sort of, you know, I've seen a lot
of things that say, well, if you're, you know, XYZ works with X 10, then nine times out of 10,
ZIGB will work. So I didn't know if you heard of that or not or if you're making about
ZIGB stuff either. Now, first I've heard about it. Yeah. Um, I'm trying to think of the bloody
X 10 sort in the States. It's just, um, I may have a bookmarked. I like I said, I found this one
to site that had just like things you wouldn't have even thought of like all different kinds of
modules and stuff. And like I said, they're the, they're the ones for them. You know, when you're
male game and stuff and I was like, man, there's nothing you can't do with this stuff. Oh, yeah,
here it is X 10 calm. That's all it is. Um, yeah, cameras, but I mean,
systems $469 and oh, that's sorry, save $469. It's $149, but you've got about two, four, six, eight,
ten, eleven modules. You've got some huge box that goes on your wall. You've got the infrared
paper stuff there. I pay about $110, I think, for lightswitch. Um, just for one. Yeah, just for
lightswitch. Yeah. Um, yeah, I want to say, I think they had like the, the, the blinds you're talking
about. I want to say there was like a hundred bucks on that one of those websites. They were
pretty reasonable. Yeah, there's one that does, once again, I've done as a numbers. The one that
does the curtain here, what it does is if it'll start to close the curtain. Okay, it's just the
motor that you can take any curtain in your house as long as it's got a cord, you know, a round
cord, a cord that looks down and goes back up. So it's just done around a wheel. Okay, so where you
say, close to curtain, um, as it's closing, it's also turning a little arm on a wheel and that
goes around and hits a switch. So you have to just so it hits the switch when you, when your
curtains just get to be the closed position, whether it's that switch is turning the motor into
reverse. Okay, so it stops. Then you have to send the signal to turn that module off. It's actually
plugged in the most plugged into an appliance module. So now you've got to send a signal to turn that
off. Okay, until you turn it off, you can hit on all you want, but it's, um, yeah, already on. So
you've got to turn it off. The next time you turn it on, the curtain will come back. Now if you
stop the curtain halfway, you cannot then close the curtain again until you come to full open.
It's okay. Yeah, the arm hits the switch. Then, but once you get the really good motors like say
for blinds, um, and this is like getting a lot more expensive. You can do anything you want. You
can, you can put it up, down, stop it in the middle, go up again, go down or whatever you can say,
it virtually becomes like a lighting module. You can say, okay, I want to dim it to 20, um, well,
let's say 50 percent. Once again, it's from under 22. Let's say you choose number 11. It will close
the blind to half. So it's like, you know, half dimmed. You can say, okay, 75 percent. It'll,
it'll close to 75 percent. And then you can open closed, go on whichever direction you want,
stop it wherever you want, you know, um, yeah. But like, I think the motive for that, I think I
paid a lot of money. I won't tell you what I paid because you're saying, God, you wasted your money,
but my wife wanted it for her birthday. So I did it. Yeah. Yeah, I know how that is. Yeah, that's
right. Just to keep peace. It was well worth the money. No, it was pretty cool. Um,
and much you find you don't want to do all your lights, which isn't stuff. You know, there's a lot
of lights, which is you don't need to do remotely and a lot of the curtains that you don't need to
do remotely. Right. Yeah. Jones, you could do your whole house for a bloody few hundred bucks.
Yes. And by the time it's been, I think you're really on a Raspberry Pi. If you just need like a
patchy and a few of things running, I mean, you could totally run that off a Raspberry Pi. I want to
see why that'd be a problem doing it. Well, I hope people have found that interesting and make
you some ideas what to use the Raspberry Pi and of course Linux for. Hopefully we might even continue
this as Jonathan incorporates this into Sona and check that out over there at the Sona project and
be sure to support Jonathan over at the accessibility computing foundation. And you'll find links for
them at the bottom of the page if you book down. Okay. Thanks. And this is Peter 64 from the
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