Anyone ever use a X10 system before? Positives? Negatives? Looking to do a drive way with remote. Thanks
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My home airport has remote control runway lights, with variable brightness. Tune the com radio to the airport frequency, key the mic five times and the lights come on. Continue to key the mic and the lights increase in brightness.
It's a very nice feature, works up to about five miles away so you can make a visual approach more easily.
Is that what you had in mind? Better visual approaches to the garage? Been missing the driveway, ripping up the lawn?
I have mixed feelings about it. X10 works great when it works. But it is finicky, such as some areas of the home cannot control other parts of the home. I end up moving breakers around to match the electrical phases, and buying phase couplers ($100) to enhance the controls. In both houses, after some initial use, it deteriorates in performance and I end up abandoning both. If anyone has x10 working easily on Windows XP, I would not mind trying it again, but not as plug-and-play as advertised.
Edited 9/23/2007 11:13 pm ET by Streamline
I recall another thread on this topic recently. Maybe you can find better answers there if you do a search.
Check AuroRa by Lutron.
My X10 experience, over the past decade, has been perfect. I use a buried driveway sensor to trip an X10 interface which trips an X10 appliance module 800' away. It'll turn on anything you plug into it. The driveway sensor (Cartel) has never had a false signal.
Turning on driveway lights, I'd just plug them into the appliance module. Works virtually every time. An elec storm will occasionally take out the interface, maybe every other year, so I keep a spare on hand. X10 hardware I use costs about $30/pr on ebay. As multiple appliance modules work fine with 1 interface, I'm expanding my system as I add outbuildings.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Edited 9/24/2007 9:16 am ET by VaTom