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And before everyone suggests CURRENT PRODUCTS, don't - because I've tried them all.

Have you really tried the computer-programmable ones? The philips pronto series (all of 'em) support downloaded IR codes. There are libraries of discrete codes (ie. non toggle, ON means ON) for just about every manufacturer you can think of.

Personally, I use the Pronto Neo. I like it for many reasons. A fully programmable touchscreen--I created custom graphics for it. I like that it has a decent amount of hard buttons too. Every button (both hard and virtual) can send IR codes, navigate/change "screens", start timers, and remote-specific things (turn on/off the backlight), or have a macro that does many or all of the above. I downloaded discrete codes for all my stuff. The System Off button turns everything off, period.

My wife loves it. She is greeted by simple icons. If she wants to watch TV, she touches the TV picture and then the TV, cable box, and receiver turn on, and she sees the network logos for her favorite channels. There are tabs for other channel logos (including a Kids tab that my kids use), and a tab that leads to a number pad for direct channel input.

If she wants to watch a DVD, it's similar. Push the DVD logo, push the "play" button. Which, by the way, slowly dims the lights down to 10% thanks to this and IR codes that I downloaded for it. The pause button ramps the lights up to 50% (for bathroom breaks).

Another little trick, I use the above IR-to-X10 gateway to turn on my PS/2 when someone touches the Game icon, thanks to an appliance module. Otherwise, it would be a pain becuase the PS/2 has a hard power switch on the back, and I have it mounted in a built-in cabinet with no room to reach behind it.

I also have a Music tab, which has buttons labeled "Jazz", "Ambient", etc. so you can turn on music without having to know what digital cable channel they're on. And, I don't even have to open the cabinets to turn all this stuff on or off, thanks to an IR repeater I have tucked in the surrounding bookshelves.

The complexity is MIND boggling. I will give ALL OF MY MONEY to someone who can fix the problem.

My 6-year old can fully operate my setup. If there's something specific you'd want to do with your setup, let me know and I'll tell you how to do it with the Pronto Neo (or the more expensive Prontos). No need to give me all your money.

I can provide screen shots of my setup if you want.

And before everyone suggests CURRENT PRODUCTS, don't - because I've tried them all.

Have you really tried the computer-programmable ones? The philips pronto series (all of 'em) support downloaded IR codes. There are libraries of discrete codes (ie. non toggle, ON means ON) for just about every manufacturer you can think of.

Personally, I use the Pronto Neo. I like it for many reasons. A fully programmable touchscreen--I created custom graphics for it. I like that it has a decent amount of hard buttons too. Every button (both hard and virtual) can send IR codes, navigate/change "screens", start timers, and remote-specific things (turn on/off the backlight), or have a macro that does many or all of the above. I downloaded discrete codes for all my stuff. The System Off button turns everything off, period.

My wife loves it. She is greeted by simple icons. If she wants to watch TV, she touches the TV picture and then the TV, cable box, and receiver turn on, and she sees the network logos for her favorite channels. There are tabs for other channel logos (including a Kids tab that my kids use), and a tab that leads to a number pad for direct channel input.

If she wants to watch a DVD, it's similar. Push the DVD logo, push the "play" button. Which, by the way, slowly dims the lights down to 10% thanks to this and IR codes that I downloaded for it. The pause button ramps the lights up to 50% (for bathroom breaks).

Another little trick, I use the above IR-to-X10 gateway to turn on my PS/2 when someone touches the Game icon, thanks to an appliance module. Otherwise, it would be a pain becuase the PS/2 has a hard power switch on the back, and I have it mounted in a built-in cabinet with no room to reach behind it.

I also have a Music tab, which has buttons labeled "Jazz", "Ambient", etc. so you can turn on music without having to know what digital cable channel they're on. And, I don't even have to open the cabinets to turn all this stuff on or off, thanks to an IR repeater I have tucked in the surrounding bookshelves.

The complexity is MIND boggling. I will give ALL OF MY MONEY to someone who can fix the problem.

My 6-year old can fully operate my setup. If there's something specific you'd want to do with your setup, let me know and I'll tell you how to do it with the Pronto Neo (or the more expensive Prontos). No need to give me all your money.

I can provide screen shots of my setup if you want.

Does anyone have any recommendations for this application?

Any budget: Car-Tell vehicle detection + HAI OmniPro controller + hardwired ALC lighting.

Low budget: X10 floodlights set to turn on X10-compatible switches when motion is detected after dusk.

I must have had typos on a couple of links, which got dropped. Here they are:

heyu: http://heyu.tanj.com/heyu/.

ACT filters: bottom of this page.

This was a fairly vague question. I moonlight as a home automation consultant. Most people, when they think of "home automation" they are really thinking about "home theater" or whole-house audio and video. There's a lot more to it, from structured wiring to control of lights, appliances, HVAC, and other items via relays, IR, etc. There could be many ways of doing what you want, depending on issues such as desired price, reliability, and how you plan to expand your system in the future.

I'm going to assume you want a simple starter solution that allows you to control an appliance (your radio), and uses a Linux box as a controller. You need at minimum two devices: A PC-to-powerline interface, and an appliance module.

For the powerline interface, pick up a CM11A which interfaces with a serial port. This is one of the few X10-the-brand devices I recommend*. Other companies make far superior X10-the-protocol equipment.

For the appliance module, pick up an ApplianceLinc. You can get one with two-way communication so that you can also request a status response (on/off) if you need to know that. Believe it or not, most of the time you don't need two-way X-10, and it's better from a signal-strength standpoint to minimize the number of transmitters on a circuit.

The simplest Linux software is heyu. This is extremely easy: just ssh into your machine and type 'heyu turn radio on', where radio has been set up in heyu as an alias for X10 code A1, or whatever X10 code you configured the appliance module to be.

The reason I said "at minimum" above is that this may work, but for a truly reliable X10 infrastructure you may need additional hardware, particularly if you decide to expand your system. In this case you'd need to get a coupler (to bridge the two 110V phases in your house) or better yet an amplified coupler/repeater such as the ACT CR230 I recommend, available at Home AutomationNet. There are others on that page as well. If you're not electrically inclined, there is a plug-in coupler.

With the above, you're almost there. Some electrical equipment attenuates X10 signals. Some computer power supplies, laser printers, and some TVs can affect signal strength. To isolate them, you may need to use some plug-in filters such as the FilterLinc or the ACT filters on the bottom of this page. If you want to get serious about obtaining a rock-solid X10 infrastructure then you can use an ESM1 signal meter. Also a new plug-in amplifier has been getting good reviews by early adopters.

* An alternative to the CM11A interface is the PowerLinc USB. Currently, the only linux support for this is in the wish project. This project seems VERY cool. Set an X10 address by just writing to a /dev device. You can also read status this way. Any shell script or language can therefore control your X10 stuff. The only downside is that it currently requires recompiling your kernel sources, except for a couple of specific RedHat kernels for which RPMs have been built. Man, would it be great if this project made it into the kernel source tree...

Hope this helps

-bp

This was a fairly vague question. I moonlight as a home automation consultant. Most people, when they think of "home automation" they are really thinking about "home theater" or whole-house audio and video. There's a lot more to it, from structured wiring to control of lights, appliances, HVAC, and other items via relays, IR, etc. There could be many ways of doing what you want, depending on issues such as desired price, reliability, and how you plan to expand your system in the future.

I'm going to assume you want a simple starter solution that allows you to control an appliance (your radio), and uses a Linux box as a controller. You need at minimum two devices: A PC-to-powerline interface, and an appliance module.

For the powerline interface, pick up a CM11A which interfaces with a serial port. This is one of the few X10-the-brand devices I recommend*. Other companies make far superior X10-the-protocol equipment.

For the appliance module, pick up an ApplianceLinc. You can get one with two-way communication so that you can also request a status response (on/off) if you need to know that. Believe it or not, most of the time you don't need two-way X-10, and it's better from a signal-strength standpoint to minimize the number of transmitters on a circuit.

The simplest Linux software is heyu. This is extremely easy: just ssh into your machine and type 'heyu turn radio on', where radio has been set up in heyu as an alias for X10 code A1, or whatever X10 code you configured the appliance module to be.

The reason I said "at minimum" above is that this may work, but for a truly reliable X10 infrastructure you may need additional hardware, particularly if you decide to expand your system. In this case you'd need to get a coupler (to bridge the two 110V phases in your house) or better yet an amplified coupler/repeater such as the ACT CR230 I recommend, available at Home AutomationNet. There are others on that page as well. If you're not electrically inclined, there is a plug-in coupler.

With the above, you're almost there. Some electrical equipment attenuates X10 signals. Some computer power supplies, laser printers, and some TVs can affect signal strength. To isolate them, you may need to use some plug-in filters such as the FilterLinc or the ACT filters on the bottom of this page. If you want to get serious about obtaining a rock-solid X10 infrastructure then you can use an ESM1 signal meter. Also a new plug-in amplifier has been getting good reviews by early adopters.

* An alternative to the CM11A interface is the PowerLinc USB. Currently, the only linux support for this is in the wish project. This project seems VERY cool. Set an X10 address by just writing to a /dev device. You can also read status this way. Any shell script or language can therefore control your X10 stuff. The only downside is that it currently requires recompiling your kernel sources, except for a couple of specific RedHat kernels for which RPMs have been built. Man, would it be great if this project made it into the kernel source tree...

Hope this helps

-bp

This was a fairly vague question. I moonlight as a home automation consultant. Most people, when they think of "home automation" they are really thinking about "home theater" or whole-house audio and video. There's a lot more to it, from structured wiring to control of lights, appliances, HVAC, and other items via relays, IR, etc. There could be many ways of doing what you want, depending on issues such as desired price, reliability, and how you plan to expand your system in the future.

I'm going to assume you want a simple starter solution that allows you to control an appliance (your radio), and uses a Linux box as a controller. You need at minimum two devices: A PC-to-powerline interface, and an appliance module.

For the powerline interface, pick up a CM11A which interfaces with a serial port. This is one of the few X10-the-brand devices I recommend*. Other companies make far superior X10-the-protocol equipment.

For the appliance module, pick up an ApplianceLinc. You can get one with two-way communication so that you can also request a status response (on/off) if you need to know that. Believe it or not, most of the time you don't need two-way X-10, and it's better from a signal-strength standpoint to minimize the number of transmitters on a circuit.

The simplest Linux software is heyu. This is extremely easy: just ssh into your machine and type 'heyu turn radio on', where radio has been set up in heyu as an alias for X10 code A1, or whatever X10 code you configured the appliance module to be.

The reason I said "at minimum" above is that this may work, but for a truly reliable X10 infrastructure you may need additional hardware, particularly if you decide to expand your system. In this case you'd need to get a coupler (to bridge the two 110V phases in your house) or better yet an amplified coupler/repeater such as the ACT CR230 I recommend, available at Home AutomationNet. There are others on that page as well. If you're not electrically inclined, there is a plug-in coupler.

With the above, you're almost there. Some electrical equipment attenuates X10 signals. Some computer power supplies, laser printers, and some TVs can affect signal strength. To isolate them, you may need to use some plug-in filters such as the FilterLinc or the ACT filters on the bottom of this page. If you want to get serious about obtaining a rock-solid X10 infrastructure then you can use an ESM1 signal meter. Also a new plug-in amplifier has been getting good reviews by early adopters.

* An alternative to the CM11A interface is the PowerLinc USB. Currently, the only linux support for this is in the wish project. This project seems VERY cool. Set an X10 address by just writing to a /dev device. You can also read status this way. Any shell script or language can therefore control your X10 stuff. The only downside is that it currently requires recompiling your kernel sources, except for a couple of specific RedHat kernels for which RPMs have been built. Man, would it be great if this project made it into the kernel source tree...

Hope this helps

-bp