X10 Home Automation Q and A - Part # 5
How do I make an X10 light brighten up from zero intensity?
Many people come up with the "requirement" to have an X10 light start from zero intensity (off) and ramp up to some level of brightness, to simulate sunrise, to avoid waking them up when they go to the bathroom, etc.
The standard X10 incandescent dimmers (e.g. DIMMING FIXTURE MODULE LEV:6376 or LAMP MODULE X10:LM465) cannot go to a absolute level of brightness other than off or on. If the device is off and it receives DIM commands, it will come on to full brightness and then start to dim (i.e. relative rather than absolute) until it receives no more DIM commands. If it dims right down to the point where the light it controls is actually off, then it can be brightened up again manually to some intermediate level. However if the device gets an OFF command (from an ALL OFF perhaps) in the meantime, there is no way to set it to anything less than full brightness without it first coming on at full brightness and then dimming down.
Where did X-10 come from?
Pico Electronics is a small design house in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland. Its founders were originally employed by General Instruments in Glenrothes but broke away to form Pico Electronics. Their first designs were among the first of the electronic calculator chips. Chips designed by Pico and manufactured by GI appeared in the calculators of many manufacturers.
A second venture following on from the calculators was a track selecting record deck in which an led/photodiode pair was used to detect the spaces between tracks on an LP. The users could play the tracks in any order, rather like the facilities that CD players provide today. This order, rather like the facilities that CD players provide today. This project was given the internal code name X9 but eventually became the ADC Accutrack.
The Accutrack originally had an ultrasonic remote control which transmitted bursts of 40khz. It repeated the code in blocks of two words. The receiver compared the two before accepting the command. The next project was given the internal code name of X10 following on from X9 and was never renamed. The original X10 units used a similar design to the ultrasonic remote control of the Accutrack.
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