Aseques's Weblog X!= blog

The real software

aseques — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:22:28 +0000

At this point you should have a working CJ11, and a device in your home installation. It’s time to install in your Linux the software to manage your devices. It’s called heyu.

You can obtain it here, it won’t be in any of your favourite linux distros, cause of the special license of the software, basically:

```
You may not charge money for it.
```
```
You may not claim you wrote it.
```

If you make improvements (or other changes), you are requested to sendthem to the Heyu maintainer so there's a focal point for distributingimproved versions.

The full text is here
In any case it worth the hassle of having to go to the site and donwload the software, since it makes controlling your X10 devices terribly easy.

Lamp module LM12

To install you just have to download && Configure && make as usual, after that, as root user do the make install, it will ask for a couple of parameters.

TTY /dev/ttyUSB0 # If you use CJ11′s USB cable you’ll probably need this
HOUSECODE A # This is the letter you’ll configure in you’re devices

Now as a normal user, you can use the software. You just have to do:

$ heyu start #To start the daemon (you need it for everything)

Now we can send commands to our devices:

$ heyu on HU # H is the house code , U is the Unit number, would start the device HU

$ heyu off HU # This would stop the device

The software

aseques — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:52:14 +0000

Once you receive your package, open it an plug your cj11 to your computer and to the current. Set any of the devices ( LM12 or AM12) to an address like A2 an plug a lamp on it and the device to the current.

If you want to test everything before starting to play with it in Linux, I’d recommend to do a test with a software that comes with the cm11 called ActiveHome. It’s really simple, you just have to install the driver so your windows recognizes the cm11 as a COM (serial) port. Then you’ve got a very simple interface where you can turn on/off the devices you’ve plugged and with an address set.

The program is useful to do some testing, but I wouldn’t use for anything serious, even less if you want to use Linux.
On the next post, I’ll talk about heyu, the software you’ll love (only linux and *nix this time)

The hardware

aseques — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:29:35 +0000

To interact with your home modules, you will need a device that can bridge your PC and the electric network of your home.

In my case I bought a CJ11, full details of the device are here (intellihome.be), it has as both a serial and a usb interface (I’d recomend to use the USB, since Linux recognizes it as /dev/ttyUSB0)

You can also order it from this page, with any of the starter kits, the price for the pack will be much cheaper than the elements sold separately, also you will qualify for free shipment (at least within europe), in my case the price was 99,95€ and you can find it here

Welcome

aseques — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:41:06 +0000

Hello, I am a Linux user, and I’m move to a new home, and I’ll try to make it as “intelligent” as I can.

Looking at the various technologies to do domotics in the house I saw that the cheapest one (other than do it yourself) is X10

For more information, you can go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

I found that it’s difficult to find appropiate information on Internet, specially technical details about the protocol.

So I’ll be posting here the discovering I will be doing.

Welcome everyone then!!