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X10  PowerHouse Product Review			Joseph M. Newcomer
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[I gather from reading this several times that the X10 Powerhouse is
a BSR controller which allows one to turn on and off various electrical
outlets in your house by sendigh digital radio signals through the power
lines to remote switches. -wab]

I bought an X10 PowerHouse with IBM-PC software a while back from the nice
folks at DAK.  I couldn't get it to work, so hadn't reported on it.

What I can now report is success.  The basic problem was the interface
was dead.  This was hard to determine, since pushing an on/off key actually
sent data to the machine, and the machine was clearly sending data to
the PowerHouse controller, but the controller never responded to the computer.
I finally got around to calling them, and got their technical guy on the line.
He had me do a couple experiments and determined that it was dead.  Within
a week I received a new unit with a return letter to return the old (dead) one.

It took a bit more experimental computer science to get it working.  The
documentation told me how to install DOS on my X10 disk, but not how
to install X10 software on my hard disk.  So of course I got it wrong;
I failed to install "X10.DAT".  I'm not sure what this does but it is
critical; without it, the interface still appears to be dead.  (The 
differences was that 'local control' at the interface would actually
activate devices!)  The error message is definitely misleading.  Anyway,
I installed X10.DAT and it worked.

The user interface is rather tasteful.  No silly little house icons with 5
bedrooms and no libraries or computer rooms (as the Radio Shack product) and
you can assign any house/unit code to any device (unlike Radio Shack where you
have to artificially use up all the "A" units to be able to use a "B" unit,
and you can't have multiple assignments to the same code).  I'd have done a
few things differently, but at least they got it really well done.  You can
save configurations on disk files, and load the files, so I now have "normal"
and "away" modes.  You can temporarily "freeze" a request so it is effectively
"turned off" without actually losing the data, although on the whole I prefer
to use different files for this.


It comes with three manuals, all rather detailed but certainly not
complete.  There is an owner's manual which tells how to install
controllers and configure them.  There is the software manual, which
tells how to use the software they deliver with it.  Finally, there
is the programming guide, which gives in nearly-infinitesimal detail
all of the async protocols for actually communicating with it.  This
detail, alas, misses a few key questions and isn't entirely clear
anyway, but most of it appears to be there.  If you have a compulsion
to program it yourself, which I think is largely unnecessary given
the not-bad-at-all software, you may end up on the phone to New
Jersey.  On the other hand, they seem anxious to help.

A Good Buy, in my estimation.  joe 

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Re:DAK BSR X10 Powerhouse Interface			Larry Campbell
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One small contradiction to Joe Newcomer's otherwise accurate review
of the BSR X10 Powerhouse in Info-IBMPC Digest V5 #68.  He said that
it looked like the protocol manual was incomplete, and that anyone
trying to actually write software for the thing would probably have
to make a few phone calls to New Jersey.  (He also wondered why anyone
would want to write such software since the program shipped with the
box was so good.)

I had to write my own software since I am not using an IBM PC running
MS-DOS, but rather a DEC Rainbow running VENIX.  I was able to get my
software working without any calls to New Jersey.  Actually there were
a couple of omissions in the manual, but I was able to figure them out
without any trouble.  All in all, I think the protocol manual is pretty
good.

Another nifty feature of the BSR box that I think Joe failed to mention
is that it contains a battery backed up clock.  Since there isn't a
reasonable way to get a clock into a Rainbow (there are some hacks on
the market at about $125, or more than twice the cost of the BSR box),
I also hacked up a way for my system to query the BSR box at boot time
for the date and time.

All in all, I agree with Joe:  the box is nifty and a bargain at $49.90.

Larry Campbell                             The Boston Software Works, Inc.
					   120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell     (617) 367-6846