power control (OT)

On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 11:41:34PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: Yes I've wanted to do this too. Actually the 3-prong appliance module ought to be enough for a printer. My experience is that the X10 toys aren't long-term reliable. Since 1997 when I got started, I have had 2 light switches fail (one liked to oscillate instead of switch on or off; the other was for the bathroom, and got used enough that its pushbutton contacts failed), an X10 switched outlet failed after only a few months, another outlet sometimes switches itself on with no input like some kind of poltergeist (but it has been a while since that happened...) and some others are just generally flaky (don't receive the commands sometimes). A couple weeks ago I set up a relay controlled by a Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire switch chip (well, actually a small one-wire relay from PointSix, controlling a bigger relay) to control the booster pump for my pool cleaner. That's working OK so far, we'll see about the long term. For now a computer in the house is controlling it (a cron job) but I want to put a TINI in the garage one of these days. The 1-wire stuff could potentially be more reliable than X10 but you do have to have extra control wires (one signal wire for the serial bus, plus a ground). A spare pair in a telephone cable works OK. Or, you could use CAN bus, that has a long track record, and there are TINI systems which can use that bus as well. Next I want to try to build a DC control board using a 1-wire switch chip and a FET, to control either relays or sprinkler solenoids. For a serial printer, a TINI could be used both to put it onto the network and control its power (along with the same sort of 1-wire relay lashup). -- _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com (_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org __) | | \________________________________________________________________