X-10 Lighting your Home

This Project was submitted to Parallax by Bryan Tuttle

When leaving the house for vacation and other trips that are lengthy I had to create a "smart timer" or as I call it a randomizer because you never know when the light will go on or off even though you can see the source code. I used a Board of Education® carrier board and a Basic Stamp® 2 module for the processor. It then controls the x-10 power line interface, witch sends out signals to the other x-10 devices. The result is a program that acts like a clock but has some leeway causing it to behave more randomly.  So before I leave the house for extended periods of time, I turn on the BASIC Stamp microcontroller. It will wait for a given amount of time, then the program of turning on and off the front room light and the front porch light making it looked lived in. It also has a LCD attached to see the status of the x-10 devices.

Since my code is lengthy here is a basic sample of my source code of how it can turn x-10 devices off an on with some pauses in between.

serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"Transmitting"]
XOUT Mpin, Zpin, [1\0]
XOUT Mpin, Zpin, [HouseA\UnitOn]
serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"Received"]
pause 500
serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"U2HA On-Line"]
pause 60000
pause 60000
pause 60000
serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"Transmitting"]
XOUT Mpin, Zpin, [1\0]
XOUT Mpin, Zpin, [HouseA\UnitOff]
serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"Received"]
pause 500
serout 3,n9600, [I,L2,"U2HA Off-Line"]