Lighting is an important aspect of our automated home. Most of our lights are controlled via either X10 DIN-mounted Lamp Modules or X10 DIN-mounted Appliance Modules. (Some are RGB LED lamps but I'll cover them in a later post.)

Although I am a morning person, I still need a little help waking up in the morning. My lovely children help a bit but being able to have the lights gradually brighten to full brightness when it is time to get up helps a lot, particularly in the winter. It also means that the children wake up at the same time every day, which in turn means they tend to go to sleep pretty reliably in the evening. In the event that they wake up too early, they know it's too early as the lights aren't on yet so generally don't wake us.

We also have X10 Motion Sensors so can automatically trigger lights in rooms with no natural light. Our utility room, where we change nappies, is a good example as this behaviour is particularly useful when you have your hands full carrying a reluctant toddler.

The children rather like the low-level stick-on X10 RF Remotes that enable them to turn on their lights (and I like the fact that they don't have to climb on the furniture to reach the "normal" switches). (They also like having the remotes trigger wolf howls, T-Rex roars and Michael Rosen from the ceiling speakers.)

One disadvantage of the dimmable lights is that most dimmers have a minimum rating. The LD11 X10 DIN-mounted Lamp Modules that we use require a minimum load of 60W. This is a problem because it is becoming increasingly difficult to buy bulbs that meet this requirement. At the moment, we typically use Energy Saver GLS Lamps which look great and use just enough power to keep the dimmers happy.

I'd be very interersted to know how others with X10 solve this problem as I'd love a solution that used less power but which was still dimmable and produced a pleasant bright light.

It has been a while since I wrote a blog entry so I thought I'd write a few posts to describe the current state of our house (with respect to home automation, not the washing up or the mess made by my two lovely children). I'll start with a few posts covering the most useful features of our automated home.

The most important device we've automated is the kettle. We "prime" the kettle after making a cup of tea by filling it, switching it on but turning it off at the mains (with an X10 Appliance module). We can then turn it on using either an X10 RF Remote, a web interface, timers or via a number of other mechanisms. This is a real time saver. I can "C-c k" from emacs and only go to the kitchen when the kettle has boiled rather than going to switch it on and wait while it boils.

Tracy says that this is just laziness. I probably used to empty/load the dishwasher while waiting for the kettle, so perhaps she is right. She prefers the fact that you can hit a remote button by the front door when you come home on a cold day, or from upstairs before you come down in the morning, and have the kettle waiting when you get to the kitchen.

The house computer also monitors the mains current and attempts to turn the kettle off for you if it sees a drop in current usage equivalent to the kettle usage. At the moment, it's working off the whole house current usage data so it doesn't always work but it still often manages to recognize the change and switch off the kettle at the main while you are filling the kettle.

I've read all sorts of articles about how people have wired up the heating in their homes to make them controllable. They all seemed terribly complicated. We felt sure there should be an easier way.

When we got our boiler replaced, we asked the heating engineers to put in an extra room thermostat under the stairs in the future node 0. (Of course, there was nothing under there at that time and they thought we were mad.) However, they did install it and so we had two thermostats, either of which could "call for heat".

The plan for control is to turn down the thermostat that is in a sensible position, so that it'll only call for heat if things go horribly wrong. Then we're going to replace the other thermostat with an AD10 X10 din rail switch. When you take the front off, the room stat has three terminals Neutral, Live, and Switched-Live so it's a simple matter (cough I only blew the fuse on the heating once!) of connecting these to the Live In, Neutral and Live Out on the AD10.

Our brief tests show that this works. Now we just need to persuade our electrician that it's a good idea.

Finally, a fine day, so our decorator installed the Solatube. I was entirely taken in by the product literature the moment I read the slogan - "Stick it where the sun don't shine!". Fortunately the tube entirely lives up to my expectations.

It's still a little odd whenever I catch sight of the previously dingy room out of the corner of my eye. As you can see there's still a bit of work to be done before the en suite is ready, so I have a little bit of time to get over it before that room is functional.

In preparation for Halloween on Monday (and so that we could serve pumpkin soup to our guests) I carved up a pumpkin. We decided to try installing an LED light in it and the result looked pretty good.

(It looked even better when I remembered to wipe off the biro I'd used to mark out the features. ;-) We used an X10 RF signal to trigger a short chase effect and play an appropriate sound. That was even better so I created a small movie of the test.

We waited impatiently until it finally got dark and we could install it overlooking the driveway.

I'm going to be most disappointed if we don't scare a few kids with it on Monday.