From gnu@toad.com Sat Mar 20 19:35:49 1993
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To: tomj@toad.com, pozar@toad.com, gnu@toad.com
Subject: X10 control of Little Garden equipment
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 18:03:21 -0800
From: gnu@toad.com
Status: OR

I got things working today with the X10 setup.

There's a new "x10" program in /usr/local/bin (which should already be
in your command path).  It knows what device the X10 controller is
attached to, by the setting of your X10DEV environment variable.  I
recommend setting it to /dev/tty07 in your .login or .profile file.

csh:	setenv X10DEV /dev/tty07
bash:	export X10DEV=/dev/tty07

Remember to log out and back in (or run the command by hand too).

Then the command "x10 info" should give you this:

Interface clock: Saturday, 17:34
Housecode = a

You can then do:

x10 unit a3 off

To turn unit A3 off, etc.

I have switched the unit numbers on the individual appliance
controllers to make them really obvious, and to avoid any conflicts
with home appliances on nearby electrical circuits that use the
default housecode (A).  (I don't know of any at the moment, but
it'd be bad to have the neighbor's coffeepot control turning the
routers off and on!)

G1 is Garden Router 1 (nos1.toad.com)
G2 is Garden Router 2 (nos2.toad.com)
G3 is Garden Router 3 (the 386BSD router)

M1 is the modems for router 1 (nos1)
M2 is the modems for router 2 (nos2)

Unfortunately X10 provides no feedback on whether the switch actually
received the command, and no way to tell what state a switch is currently
in.

See `man x10'.  You can download events into the X10 interface, which
has a clock, and it will do the events even if the computer is down.
E.g. you could have it send out "turn on all equipment" messages once
an hour, every day.  Or you could have it turn off the routers at
6:23AM every Sunday, and turn them back on at 6:24 every Sunday.  You
could even use such a setup to power down your computer (the one
controlling the X10 system) and have it turn itself back on at a
specified time.  Hoptoad isn't currently plugged in that way...

If hoptoad isn't reliable enough, as a way to do these things
remotely, we can get another controller (they run about $50 at Fry's)
and plug it into the 386BSD box.  Then if either hoptoad or the BSD
box is up, we can control the other boxes.

This should make it pretty easy to reset these things remotely.
Let me know of any problems you have.  Pass on the info to other TLG members
who need to know.

	John

PS:  I haven't tested the controls much since I didn't want to be jerking
the net up and down a lot.