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Last modified: Thu Jul 8 07:05:14 2004

This section of my site contains articles about, and links to software for, computer-based home automation, using X10. X10 is system for controlling lights and appliances, where control signals are carried on the mains wiring itself. It is very big in the USA, but not widely used in Britain. This article describes how to use X10 for home automation, and for solving knotty wiring problems.

X10 devices can be controlled by computers, if you have the appropriate interface. This makes it easy to turn appliances on and off at set times, link remote-control button presses to play MP3 audio, and all sort of clever tricks.

I have developed a Linux driver for the TW723 X10 controller. For source code and more information, click here for more information. This driver can be used with the X10 API and reference implementation, also available from this site.

I have proposed a Java API for X10 devices. Using this API, Java applications would be able to control and monitor X10 equipment. This will, of course, require a device-specific driver compatible with this specification. At present, a driver exists which provides the Java interface to the TW723 native-code driver described above. The complete system consists of the following components:

• A The API interfaces and JavaDoc comments
• A A Java driver for the twseriald Linux driver described above
• A A command-line test client written in Java (see the README file for an overview)
• A A web client implemented using JSP pages (works with Tomcat). For more information click here

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