Re: Dry contact X10 switch?

[james@xxxxxxx (James Derrick)]

On Mon, 14 Sep 1998 11:50:45 +0100, you wrote:

>I've thought about dismantling an appliance control module / adding a
>homebrew mains switched relay to an appliance module output - but would
=
be
>much happier with an off-the-shelf solution.
The problem here is that the electronics just give a pulse for each
change of state. The relay is actually a solenoid operating a square
cam. This then opens and closes the contacts on alternate pulses. This
makes it practically impossible to change the relay to beef it up.

The US AM486 and UK AM7466 are both the same on this. I have collected
a couple of circuit diagrams, most of which are on Hans Attersj=F6
homepage:
http://www.io.com/~hattersj/
or Hans Otten's pages:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/6490/circuits.html

>Any pointers to suitable products for UK use anyone?
I did think that Intellihome had a beast to solve this problem for
myself:
http://www.intellihome.be/htbin/productdetail?id=3DIH-2001

Sadly it turns out that this is only for electric heating- it probably
uses burst-fire switching.

So far a butchered US or UK appliance module is the best I know of.
It's a bit more complex for my heating as there's a mid position valve
to direct the hot water to the rads and/or the water cylinder. This
means the programmer relays are change over types making it impossible
to wire both in tandem.

My plan is to simply leave this as is and add relays in parallel with
the water and room thermostats. These are simple single pole devices,
and the existing programmer can be left as an override.=20

This does mean that you need to hack X10 modules as you would need to
feed them live and neutral to get the signal, but isolate the relay
contacts so as not to short out the thermostat.

At this point I think of just using a relay hanging off an I/O port as
the fiddling about with the X10 seems a bit much.

I hope this helps,

James
---
James Derrick    james@xxxxxxx, Cramlington, Near Newcastle, =
England
Forwarding Service: jderrick@xxxxxxx
Beyond the Horizon of the place we lived when we were =
young,
In a World of Magnets and Miracles. Pink Floyd.

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