Power line comms X-10

[Darrel Taylor]

Well, he might have given up, but I'm still curious Dave.

Is there another extended command set I don't know about.
Not trying to be contrary, I just want to make the previous posts as complete as possible.

I wasn't exactly thorough in my search last time, but those were the only other X-10 commands I could find.

Are there more?

[dhouston]

Darrel,

There's a text file on my web page listing all X-10 commands. Originally, it was a .DOC file that was so horrendously formatted that it was nearly impossible to read so I reformatted it as the text file. Later, X-10 made it into a .PDF and I reference that URL at the top of the text file.

• http://davehouston.org/xtc798.txt

Many of the commands described have not been implemented by existing hardware although X-10 Europe seems to be using more of them than X-10 USA. This is probably because CE rules required them to redesign most of the hardware sold in Europe a few years back. Here, the LM14A and AM14A use some of the extended command set as do some dimmer switches made by Leviton (who confuses things by calling their Extended Dim commands Preset Dims). You need a more sophisticated interface to receive these commands - CM11A, CM15A, and some of Smarthome's interfaces. There are European equivalents to the CM11A.

There's a subtle thing (well, not really all that subtle but it's not explicit in their documentation of the power-line protocol and these devices) about the X-10 TTL two-way interfaces (TW523, PSC05, TW7223, XM10) that most people miss. It only reports valid codes it sees on the power-line. This means it cannot report in real time, since it needs to validate a whole code or 22-bits, but must delay one whole command-worth of time (22 half cycles of the 50Hz or 60Hz). In other words, what it reports actually occurred about 1/4 second earlier. And it cannot report continuously - it reports only every third command in the case of Dims and Brights and reports only the first 22-bit chunk of the longer extended commands. And it will only report valid codes, which must begin with 1110. It acts a bit like a 22-bit shift register with the clock being the power-line frequency.

You did say you want to be thorough.