Christmas Lights

[esommer]

I am thinking about buying some appliance modules to automated my Christmas lights. By my lights have been know to blow the circuit at certian times. I was wondering if I got a two-way appliance module, would it still be able to communicate with HAL if the circuit is tripped? That way HAL would let us know that the lights are off. If not, is there a workaround?

[Nathan]

If the circuit trips, then the appliance module cannot talk back to HAL. As far as I know, there is no mechanism in HAL to detect when a module stops talking either, so you can't have HAL notice when the module goes away.

It might just be possible to do this in CMAX (if you have an Ocelot) since the Ocelot can look for specific X10 codes that HAL cannot. So you could write code to query the status of a module, look for an answer and failing to get one, trip an alarm. But that's only a guess. I don't know what obstacles one might run into in writing CMAX code to handle this. It seems simple enough though.

An easier approach might be to use a Hawkeye wireless sensor, and have HAL detect the presence of the light from the Xmas lights. Then, failure of the Hawkeye to report light when the lights have been turned on could be treated as an error condition. That would likely be the easiest way to make it work.

Of course setting it up so as not to be affected by other lights, or daylight, would be a bit of a challenge. But not too tough. Just put one light on the string in a light proof box with the Hawkeye.

Or plug a small wall-wart into the light string and use it to turn on an LED placed next to the Hawkeye light sensor. Or even better, trigger a Powerflash module. There are several ways to get an X10 sensor signal when the power comes on.

Getting the HAL logic right would take a little while, but it would flow something like this:

Turn on Xmas lights:
Set a timer for a few seconds:
On Hawkeye Sensor reporting light stop timer:
If Timer expires, sound alarm that lights have failed to come on as expected.

That should do it, I think.

Good luck...

Nathan

[esommer]

[quote:bedd7a2d96=\"Nathan\"] Or plug a small wall-wart into the light string and use it to turn on an LED placed next to the Hawkeye light sensor. Or even better, trigger a Powerflash module. There are several ways to get an X10 sensor signal when the power comes on.[/quote:bedd7a2d96]

Is a wal-wart a plug-in module?

[Nathan]

Just any little odd power supply you have lying about that will trigger a powerflash module. If you play with enough electronic gadgets you accumilate a drawer full of these things.

Specifications are not critical as long as it's output is within the range required to trigger a powerflash.

Cheers,
Nathan