Here's a bare bones RF X-10 setup - everything you need for $25.99. See the url
It contains a keyfob transmitter and a receiver - the receiver plugs in to a receptacle. It (the receiver) contains a relay controlled 2 prong receptacle into which you can plug an incandescant light up to 500 watts, or a resistive load up to 15 amps.
An X10 controller creates a 121 kHz carrier, superimposed on the 60 hZ AC line. At the 60 hZ 0 crossing, the system sends pulses of that carrier frequency, containing an address and a command. The address tells which remote X10 device to respond, and the command tells it how to respond.
An X10 wireless system consists of an RF transmitter, that sends a code to an X10 transceiver. The transceiver receives the RF, decodes it into address and command, and then operates the same way as the controller. In addition, the transceiver can act as an X10 remote device, controlling whatever is connected to it according the command whenever it is addressed. to send pulses out to the X10 devices.
Actually, it sends three one millisecond pulses over a cycle of the power, 1/180th a second apart. One for each zero crossing of the three possible phases. One bit takes two cycles, with the data sent at the zero crossings and it's complement the next cycle. Total data rate including overhead is something like 22 bits per second.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident
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